Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Though it may no longer be much of a rebellious stance, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the Mission: Impossible series over the years.  We’ve gotten a blend of old-school spy thrillers and modern actioners, of John le Carré, Ian Fleming, and Shane Black.  Even better, the series has been home to number of different styles, thanks to the revolving door of directors: from Brian de Palma’s twisty espionage tale to John Woo’s slightly-bloated spectacle to J.J. Abrams’s more grounded thrill-ride to Brad Bird’s stunt extravaganza to Christopher McQuarrie’s melange of the bunch.  Though the stories may be unexpected and laden with double-crosses and plot somersaults, some things remain constant, especially the star power of Tom Cruise (and Ving Rhames, in fairness) and the centrality of jaws-widening stunt work.  This is the series I point to, rather than The Fast and the Furious, if for no other reason than I was never able to ever actually get behind that franchise, whereas this one hooked me from the start.

True story:  Back in the later part of the mid-90s, I got into something of a spy kick.  I was young, pretty shallow in my understanding of the whole HUMINT schtick, but I was spurred on by The Saint and Mission: Impossible.  Sure, the films are needlessly pretzel-y and the former’s got some major flaws, but the life of a super-spy was just so damned enticing!  I made badges for my friend and myself, I planned on buying hollow coins and such for the obvious bevvy of secret messages I had to send, and I would routinely patrol the neighborhood for nothing in particular.  ‘Twas a wild time.

Anyway.

The newest entry in the Mission: Impossible series, Fallout, follows its previous entry pretty directly, the first true, continuity-following sequel of the bunch (sure a bunch of plot threads and characters technically carry over through the others, but this is the first time the story of one film flows nearly immediately into the next; think the Bond films before and after the Craig reboot).  Ethan Hunt and his crew are after some plutonium, which the Syndicate wants to use for their nefarious deeds.  A new run-in with Solomon Lane, though, complicates matters, as does CIA tag-along August Walker.

From the get-go, we’re presented with the same combination of classic films and stories (bordering on the pulps and serials, frankly) and contemporary bombast, but this blend doesn’t stay consistently grand.  McQuarrie’s return to the director’s chair is welcome, as he has an eye for how to stage action sequences and interrogations alike, but his script leaves quite a bit to be desired.  It tends to favor the old-school dialogue, with plenty of cheese and chintz to go along with some relieving humor, technobabble, and exposition.  Along with some sight gags, there are too many lines that are too melodramatic and/or corny to be either effective or convincingly delivered with a straight face (or at least received with one).  This dialogue had me rolling my eyes at several instances, wondering if the film was meant to be an overt homage to 40s thrillers like Saboteur and Foreign Correspondent, just with some steroidal action to keep the modern attention.

But it’s that action that allowed me to forgive (mostly) the dialogue.  As per usual, the set pieces and stunt work therein is fantastic, and McQuarrie and editor Eddie Hamilton (you may remember his work from the Kingsman films and X-Men: First Class) keep the action grounded in view, steady, comprehensible, and clear.  This is all aided by the cinematography of Rob Hardy (of Ex Machina, Annihilation, and Euphoria fame), whose able lenses not only lovingly capture the stunts, but also provide some sweeping views of Asiatic mountains and European architecture (his sweeps through Paris are downright stunning, kids).  This isn’t Paul Greengrass’s Bourne work, but rather the American inheritance of the Hong Kong masters.  It helps that Cruise is seemingly more than willing to ridiculously endanger himself for the sake of the shot, too.

Speaking of which, Cruise remains the linchpin of the operation, still running about and somehow believably thrusting himself into all sorts of crazy physical shenanigans.  Though he’s still going strong, there are points here, much like in the second entry in the series, that directly massage his ego.  Time and again, we’re regaled with the greatness of Ethan Hunt and how he’s great and how he can climb mountains and is an unstoppable machine and so forth.  It’s nothing too great, but it’s evident, likely a symptom of Cruise’s producerial credit and his fear of waning youth, though these are mere speculation on my part.  It’s a welcome sight to see Simon Pegg a bit more active in the plot, and he and the returning Rebecca Ferguson acquit themselves rather well in the narrative.  Sean Harris is a touch overwrought as Solomon Lane, though that’s more of a problem with the script than anything (it’s hard to make that grand spiel he does from the trailers sound, y’know, natural or whatnot), and Harry Cavill is slightly wasted, as per usual, as Walker, relegated to a stiff tough guy without much of the charm I know he can bring to the table (see The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Tudors for proof).  Overall, though, the acting works, just shackled a touch by the script’s flinch-inducing tendencies.

And that’s pretty much how I would sum up the film as a whole.  Ir’s another great actioner worthy of the franchise, but the screenplay lets it down in parts.  Luckily, these weak points are nowhere near debilitating, just kinda distracting.  There’s plenty of fun to be had for, to be sure, and it makes me wonder where the series can even go in the coming years, a quality problem to have, if’n ya ask me.  Cheers, kids.

A Prayer Before Dawn

A young Brit takes his licks in Thai boxing arenas.  He’s got skills, though he’s not quite unbeatable.  He just keeps on keeping on, fighting and fighting, a lingering heroin addiction looming over him.  He’s not in a good place, mentally or physically, but he proceeds apace.  As one might expect, the authorities don’t take kindly to a heroin junkie, and the young man finds himself incarcerated in this foreign land.  The smack still has him in its clutches, forcing some desperate begging and horrible acts for the fixes to keep on coming.  All the while, he is surrounded by tattooed tough guys, their language unfamiliar; he is stuck in just about every way one can be stuck.  Glimpses of light come from a sympathetic kathoey, while a way out emerges in the form of a boxing tournament.  This is the story of Billy Moore.  This is A Prayer Before Dawn.

As you can see, the story isn’t exactly a complicated one, but it is certainly an affecting one.  Joe Cole, who, despite solid work on Peaky Blinders and Green Room, will apparently forever be known on my end for his relatively minor role of Chas in A Long Way Down, brings the heat here as Moore, the man’s inner demons and external struggles on full, powerful display.  Cole plays things to the bone, communicating both subtly and overtly Moore’s pain, anxiety, and steadfastness.  His performance alone is worth the price of admission, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if his name comes up a few times during awards season.  Pornchanok Mabklang also does rather well as the aforementioned kathoey, Fame, providing a welcome reprieve of sensitivity in a sea of stark brutality.

Indeed, director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire packs every moment of Moore’s incarceration with intensity of some manner.  One truly feels Moore’s plight as he’s forced into solitary confinement in small chambers, as he witnesses the harsh gang-rape of a fellow inmate, as he bristles against both the administration and his fellow cell-block-mates.  Subtitles are sparse here, bringing us into Moore’s headspace: confused and unsure of what to think and how to act amongst a crowd of criminals, most of them seemingly inherently violent at times, who don’t speak his language.  We are just as lost he is, his fears and anxieties are ours, a lease we never truly ask for but one that brings some surprisingly strong benefits by the time the credits begin to roll.  David Ungaro’s cinematography is just as evocative here as it was in Mary Shelley, but here we’re given some sweaty earth tones, mostly bare (and inked) flesh, stone, wood, and dirt, all rendered lovingly in the Frenchman’s digital lenses.  In step with editor Marc Boucrot (whom you may remember from cutting Enter the Void nearly a decade ago), Ungaro lets us see Moore’s progression from unthinking, sloppy boxer/addict to focused, efficient fighter in sharp clarity and visceral visuality.  Sauvaire and Ungaro make full use of the prison location (actually in Cebu, in the Philippines), providing a sense of authenticity often lacking in prison films.

All is not perfect here, though.  The almost monomaniacal focus on Moore’s languishing on the way to redemption in the ring certainly keeps things grounded in brutal reality, but this single-mindedness occasionally leads to some pacing issues.  As far as I’m concerned, the amount of time we spend with Moore as he suffers is necessary to fully grasp the severity of the situation and the power of the conclusion, but there are times where it feels as though things are dragging, threatening to become stagnant.  Seemingly interminable scenes of the inmates squabbling amongst themselves bombard our senses, much of the content inferred across the language barrier (another nice touch, if you ask me), draining us just as much as Moore, making the runtime really make its length known.  Moore’s rise through the boxing tournament isn’t sudden or jarring by any stretch, but it doesn’t feel quite as fleshed-out as the previous bits, giving the film a decidedly front-loaded feeling.  And there is definitely a point, somewhere in the middle, where the overwhelming tangibility of it all finally starts to flatten you, further bringing you into Moore’s world, but also tiring you out.

Still, these pacing issues (if they can even be called that) do little to lessen the overall impact of the film.  Guts are punched time and again, and respites are few and far between.  This is the most mentally affecting film I’ve seen thus far this year, and is near the top of my list for the best at the moment.  There is power in abundance here, and any laurels garnered are incredibly well-deserved.

The Keeping Hours

Call it overdone, but I’ve been digging the recent trend in horror films wherein supernatural goings-on can be taken at face value and also as a concrete metaphor for something else, usually related to mental health or thereabouts.  Think The Witch, The Babadook, even Hereditary.  Though the best offerings in this tangent can indeed be interpreted at at least a couple of levels, there’s still something to be said for the traditional, more straightforward approach, even when the subject may easily lend itself to the aforementioned method of symbolism.

Case in point: The Keeping Hours.

Honestly, when I came upon this film, I’d never heard of it.  Apparently, though it may have been considered for theatrical release, the film was relegated to a VOD release, in spite of its production company’s usual release methodology: Blumhouse, the bringers of The Conjuring, Sinister, and a bunch of lower-budgeted/decent-returning horror flicks, doesn’t tend to shy away from potentially making bank on a film that didn’t cost them much (though, admittedly, I don’t know the at-hand particulars regarding budget).  Plus, the film boasts stars Lee Pace and Carrie Coon, both of whom have shined as armor- and blue skin-sporting alien killers in Marvel films, among other career accomplishments.  It was for them (Coon in particular, not gonna lie) that I gave the film a shot, thinking that the ol’ BH name would, worst-case, provide some minor ironic entertainment at the bery least.

The story concerns the couple comprising Pace and Coon.  We see them wed in a slightly hipster-twee ceremony (lord, the khaki colors and suspenders!) and then head off with their five-year-old son in the car.  You know things are gonna go sideways when the camera is placed in the dead center of the car, with plenty of shots of the parents looking back at the child.  Indeed, an off-screen wreck happens, killing the child; an intervening set of years sees the couple split, mostly due to their grief, as explained to Pace’s dementia-riddled father.  He heads back to their old shared domicile, the current renters having skipped town, only to find a spectral version of his late son.  From here on out, he tries to get his wife involved to figure out why their son has seemingly returned, all the while the couple growing closer, reconnecting.

Now, not gonna lie, the story, from screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshine (of The Haunting of Molly Hartley fame), is sorta/kinda uneven.  Because the haunting aspect of things isn’t technically the main point, it’s dealt with rather cleanly by the characters, who never really react all that shocked toward the apparition.  Sure, they’re surprised at first, but they acclimate extremely quickly and get to playing along a lot more easily than one might expect them to.  At several points, I expected things to take a more psychological bent, especially when details about the couple’s parting become apparent, but the shift never came, though the opportunities were indeed there.  Instead, the real point of the story, a message of forgiveness and second chances and getting over grief, comes into focus.

At times, this odd romantic angle abruptly oscillates between the melodramatic and the maudlin and a more genuine, grounded feel.  I attribute this unevenness to the script, which tends toward the gut-powered emotional side of things, clashing slightly with the strong performances of the two leads.  Pace and Coon (not to mention Amy Smart, who plays a helpful neighbor) both do very well with their parts, breathing some rather realistic life into characters whose situations are certainly outside of the norm, but they always seem hindered by the script’s limitations.  Any strongly emotional display is quickly wiped away, not quite forgotten but definitely whitewashed-over, everything forcibly marching blindly toward the conclusion.

Still, the overarching message is a palpable one, even if the road thereto is paved with some foot-stumbling stones.  More than that, the minor horror elements tend to work pretty well, too.  The first such flourish, a shot of a hallway in which all of the doors suddenly shut simultaneously, is especially effective, due to the hitherto straightforward framing and overall suddenness of the action.  Not all of the horror bits are equally effective, and there aren’t too many of them, but it’s a welcome flavoring in this emotional dish.  I got some serious Before I Wake vibes, though the direction of Karen Moncrieff isn’t quite as lush and fluid as Mike Flanagan’s; still, it’s good company to be in, if you ask me.

So, yeah, I’m a little conflicted about this one.  On the one hand, I dug the mixture of horror and emotional elements, the acting, and the general messaging; on the other, the script can’t keep the keel even, there are unfulfilled potentionals, and the story often gets bogged down in some melodramatic flights.  The film is certainly worth a watch, but expectations favoring horror bits, thanks to Blum’s presence, need to be heavily tempered in favor of family drama.  I can’t say that it’s great by any stretch, but it’s a somewhat unique take on the dissolution and reunification of a family in the wake of a tragedy.

Duck Duck Goose

What happened here?

I remember a while ago watching some trailers (I wanna say in front of Coco or Peter Rabbit or something along those lines) and seeing one for Duck Duck Goose.  It didn’t look all that great, honestly, not unlike the upcoming Grinch flick from Illumination.  Then, nothing; the film dropped out of consciousness, save for the occasional poster or online mention reminding me that it was indeed a thing that was coming out … sometime in the future.  All of a suddenly (as my brother would say), there it is on Netflix.  What happened?  You don’t make trailers and put ’em in front of marquis family fare and not release the film to theatres.

Well, apparently, the film was indeed set to be released in theatres, not unlike fellow Chinese/American co-production Rock Dog (*shudder*), but the original distributors somewhere along the way got cold feet and decided to heave the thing off onto Netflix.  Ya gotta admit, that’s not the greatest omen, is it?

Lo and behold, the film is not very good at all.  To start off, I found myself channeling my inner CinemaSins (something no one should ever want to have happen) while sitting through a succession of production logos that takes over a minute to finish and feels even slower.  Great start.  The story, then, is your usual headstrong/cocky-protagonist-gets-reluctantly-saddled-with-kids-and-learns-about-the-importance-of-love-and-family spiel, this time revolving around a Chinese goose watching after erstwhile orphaned ducklings.  While heading to the migration grounds, the trio is hunted by a manic, dual-personality-suffering cat hellbent on devouring them.  Insert shenanigans and hijinx here.

Not only is the plot something we’ve seen done many times before, just about all of them done better, but the script itself, brought to us by a cabal who previously worked on things like Surf’s Up and the “live action” Jungle Book from a few years ago, is abysmal.  An abundance of low-brow, bodily-function humor teems, while the characters spew unfunny line after unfunny line.  Nearly no one is likable, and anyone who comes close finds themselves spewing some lame, stupid, uninspired dialogue.

The cast speaking these lines, meanwhile, is hit or miss, but mostly mediocre.  On the one hand, you’ve got Zendaya as the elder duckling trying way too hard for a production like this and Greg Proops knocking the cat out of the park; on the other, you’ve got Jim Gaffigan as our lead goose, completely wrong for the part and sounding annoyingly nasal throughout (even with the bill taken into account); and the rest of the cast is just kinda there.  I do appreciate the Frasier homage with a pair of cranes played by Stephen Fry and Craig Ferguson, but they don’t have much to work with, thanks to the garbage script.

On the visual side of things, the film reminded me a lot of Storks and The Good Dinosaur, mostly the latter:  While the character designs were just kinda meh, the backgrounds were stunning, combining a photorealistic look with an almost painted aesthetic.  The overall effect is a collection of damn fine-looking visuals, sadly supporting a well-worn story and a messy script.  Further undermining the visuals is the soundtrack, a grouping of pop and pop-punk songs tossed into the background every now and then, rarely having much impact or reflecting the tone all that well.  The songs are bland and ho-hum and serve no purpose, save possibly to vainly try and maintain kids’ attentions during the dull plot.

Overall, Duck Duck Goose is a film that’s more dull and chore-like than its namesake game.  Sure, it’s on Netflix, so it won’t cost you anything to see it monetarily, but think of the time you could be spending watching anything else with your kids (or, like me, by yourself), especially when things like Moana, Coco, and Shrek are right there next to this trash.

Unfriended: Dark Web

Sometimes I wonder how it is I can eat my words so often and still not get either tired or disgusted by the taste.  (I call this process “Kinder-Ei-ing”: When I took a class trip to Germany and Austria in middle school, I was introduced to the Kinder surprise eggs (we referred to them as Kinder Ei, “Ei” meaning “egg” auf Deutsch) and proceeded to eat so many of them over the course of those two weeks that I can’t physically eat them anymore.  Since then, the situation has only happened once more, involving chicken taquitos from high school.  Fun facts.)  A little while ago, I mentioned on this site’s Facebook page that I was actually looking forward to the Unfriended sequel after seeing the trailer.  Why do I do things like that?

Alright, so Dark Web isn’t all that bad, really.  In actuality, it’s a massive step up from the original, which was just a seeming millennium of obnoxious idiots saying and doing terrible things and yelling all the while.  I hated every second of that piece of garbage, lemme tell ya.  This time out, the characters aren’t nearly as annoying, the story is mostly fine (more on that in a moment), and I didn’t leave the theatre in a foggy haze of rage.  It’s still not great by any means, but I’ll take any improvement I can get at this point, ya dig?

So here’s the basic premise: a guy happens upon a laptop and brings it home.  During a Skyped game night with friends, he stumbles on some dark content on the hard drive, leading to the Skype call getting hacked and hijacked by a shadowy force.  You can imagine some shenanigans stemming from this, yes?  Indeed they do, kids, indeed they do.  (I should note, however, that I don’t believe the poster’s picture ever really happens in the film.  Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.)  Just like last time, everything unfolds before us from the perspective of the man’s laptop screen, with plenty of programs and videos and whatnot jumping into view as he does things on the computer.

But there are some fundamental changes to this format pretty quickly.  First, there are time cuts now.  The first film was pretty much in real time, but this time there are a few quick edits every now and again, mostly during downtime, like the initial rounds of Cards Against Humanity the characters play (is this a thing the young’ns still play?).  These cuts don’t make much of a difference, but they begin the puncturing of the framing conceit.  It’s further undermined by the occasional bit of voicework from behind our point of view: much like the ending of the first, there is indeed a world outside of the screen, but here we get snippets during the main action, usually when the system or programs crash.  There’s also some non-diegetic background music, further weakening the framing gimmick.  Now, there is a bit at the very end that also continues this trend, but I’m not gonna hold that bit against the film, as the same sort of thing happened at the end of the first.

Much like the first, this film also dabbles in jump scare tactics for its thrills.  Any excuse, any opportunity is jumped upon, complete with a requisite loud noise or even a non-diegetic sound sting.  The jump scares aren’t all that plentiful, mostly due to the sparse cast, but that is the main thrust of horror here, sadly.  The foley work and sound editing are decidedly uneven, with many sound effects forced way too high in the mix, especially considering the fact that we’re supposed to be hearing them on webcam-based microphones (I doubt any of the characters are rocking a quality XLR or anything, call me crazy).  And then there’s the distortion issue.  Just like the first film, the footage digitally tears and distorts when the characters meet their respective fates.  Unlike the first, though, as the trailer attests (so no need for a full spoiler warning), the danger stems not from a ghost, but from people.  So why the distortion?  I think it’s meant to be some sort of active cloaking or camouflage or something like that, but it’s not entirely clear.  Combined with some magical screen editing (like disappearing messages shaking as they’re deleted), a feeling of dorky impossibility pervades much of the computer-based shenangians, not a positive trait for a film set entirely around computers.  Most of the rest of my issues are minor, like why the protagonist, Matias, has such a juvenile e-mail address (do people still make goobery addresses anymore?)and the improper pronunciation of Charon (despite a pronunciation key right in front of them and someone correcting the pronunciation of Styx).

But I said “most” there.  Like I said before, the idea of the plot is fine, potentially really good.  But the handling of things just doesn’t do the concept justice.  Things have a very static feel to them, weakening any sense of fright or suspense or dread.  As such, many of the deaths are more funny than scary, mostly because they’re portrayed so straightforwardly and lifelessly (pun intended).  The main romantic subplot is actually well-founded, but it’s emotionality is out of place in this narrative, especially when the relationship begins to be co-opted by the malefactors.  And the ultimate reasoning for all of the action is a slight kiss-off, as if the filmmakers saw Megan Is Missing and Nerve and thought the combination of the two would be great.  I have no idea why, then, this was made as part of the Unfriended franchise, considering the characters all stay friends throughout and the action isn’t propelled by their intra-friendship dickery, aside from the cost-effectiveness of the frame (see as the upcoming thriller Searching with John Cho).

Still, the film’s got some legs, and the basic foundation of the plot helps move things along without becoming annoying or overly trite.  The acting is much better here, with much less obnoxious histrionics (although some of Rebecca Rittenhouse’s Skype-box reactions are way too static and flat to really work, and Connor del Rio comes awfully close to being genuinely caustically annoying).  First-time director Stephen Susco, likely best known for penning the first two American Grudge films and Texas Chainsaw 3D, handles the situation rather well, and with a bit of seasoning could have pulled things off with more success.  His script, showcasing some of the questionable bits of his aforementioned prior works (“Get ’em, cuz!” springs to mind…), never fully unravels like the first film’s did, helping to keep the modicum of suspense alive until the end.

So, is it any good, all told?  Yeah, actually,  it is.  It’s got some major issues, to be sure, but overall I didn’t hate this experience, and I think there are enough improvements and good ideas to keep things from fully flagging.  A direct sequel is hinted at at the end (sort of), so there’s hope that this particular franchise, something I never thought I’d get into, can continue to grow, expand, and improve into the future.  So, a solid-enough premise and some baked-in hope: more than I could have expected from this sequel.  Right on.

Billionaire Boys Club

You remember the classic ad campaign Maxell put out in the 80s?  Sure ya do, the one where a guy puts a Maxell cassette into his hi-fi, sits in his chair, and proceeds to get blown back by the power of the sounds coming from his speakers.  It’s an iconic spot, one that I’m pretty sure I’ve seen parodied on The Simpsons and Family Guy, and more surely can join them in solidarity.  That’s what starts things off here, a recreation of that commercial, with Ansel Elgort in the chair and the cassette bearing the film’s title on its label in clear handwriting.

Sadly, this is the extent of the stylistic flourishes we’re given.  Indeed, Billionaire Boys Club, a remake of the 1987 made-for-TV movie of the same name that was itself based on a true story, ticks all of the expected boxes of films chronicling greedy wheelings and dealings in the Reagan Era.  It’s got the usual story of young blokes looking to hit it big in business, caring more for appearances than substance, and going overboard when it comes to greed, excess, and partying.  To be more specific, a pair of old schoolmates in LA reconnect and set out to make some fat stacks.  They form an investment firm based around a vague investment philosophy, sell the idea to investors, and start tasting success.  Things go sideways, though, as they are wont to do in stories like this, leading to plenty of shenanigans.

Admittedly, the expected 80s excess is somewhat toned down here, limited to only a small handful of mildly raucous montages and whatnot.  Still, everything is incredibly rote, as if the filmmakers took notes while watching Wall Street, The Wolf of Wall Street, and maybe even The Secret of My Success, handed them over to the screenwriting team, and told them to cobble something together in a week.  And even then, everything is tinged with an overwhelming feeling of blandness, staleness, a distinct lack of style and originality.  The young firm’s plan is so vague and nonsensical that it ties in perfectly with the theme of false facades, but its presentation is actually too vague to work as an effective storytelling device, and this just makes the blandness all the more palpable and inexcusable: a little bit of creative stylization could have covered over this particular weakness.  Instead, we’re left thinking everyone involved is either the greatest con man ever known or a simpleton of the highest order.  It’s all just convenient and contrived-seeming, even though the foundational story actually happened!  We’re even tossed a bland, by-the-numbers romantic subplot, complete with apparently-requisite trite sex scene (surprisingly PG-13 in this R-rated flick), seemingly just to pad the runtime and pile a little something onto the mountain of stakes.  Thanks, guys.

Funnily enough, the cast is pretty damn solid.  The aforementioned Elgort finally fits in a role again, playing an erstwhile clean-cut wannabe looking to break bad and make it big; Taron Egerton does exceedingly well as his more savvy partner, sporting an American accent that’s spot-on; Kevin Spacey does his usual sleazy thing as a shady financier, although many of his greasy lines take on some squirmy subtexts given the things we know about him now; Bokeem Woodbine is great as a terse bouncer/bodyguard; and Judd Nelson makes a tiny appearance as Elgort’s father, a funny little nod to the original film, wherein Nelson played Elgort’s character.  (Additional fun fact:  It’s been said that the original TV movie was what was playing when the Menendez Brothers devised their plan to murder their parents.  Go figure.)  A few other cameos raised an eyebrow during viewing, including Cary Elwes as Andy Warhol (oh, he kills it, son) and Toto favorite Rosanna Arquette as the love interest’s mother.  Speaking of, one of the weak spots of the cast is Emma Roberts, said love interest.  She doesn’t act poorly, but she brings little in the way of personality to her role, and she very much doesn’t rise above her staid material.  Similarly, the rest of the main firm backers all sort of blend together, looking, sounding, and acting so damned much the same that I easily lost track of who was who, although it kinda doesn’t matter if you keep them straight or not, as they’re only incidental to the plot.

When all is said and done, I can only say that, yeah, I saw Billionaire Boys Club.  Nothing new is gonna be learned here, nothing in the way of insight or commentary that hasn’t been done better elsewhere.  It’s a bland, dull film that, while not being truly bad, doesn’t come close to achieving anything near memorable.  It’s a fine enough film to pass some time by, especially if you wanna hear small bits of 80s classics for a bit, but it’s nothing you’re likely gonna remember afterward.

Zinda

Heading into some unexplored territory for AoG this time out.  I’ve mentioned before that I’ve seen films in dozens of languages, from my standard English to Icelandic and Luganda to Esperanto, but my experience with Indian films is shockingly shallow.  Most of my reticence to jump into the subcontinent’s originally stemmed from the usual perceptions of the usual stereotypes of Bollywood films: bright, glitzy, laden with gaudy song-and-dance numbers.  Some of these did indeed come into play with my first foray into the megagenre, 3 Idiots, but I ultimately found the film to be rather enjoyable and entertaining, a couple of the songs even touching and/or eliciting the tapping of toes.

I’m still very much in the dark, shallow end of the pool when it comes to Indian films, but there was no way I was gonna pass up the opportunity to catch a flick that was a remake of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy.  Now, sure, I distinctly remember seeing Spike Lee’s disaster of a remake (it was my first employee pass at a different theatre than my home site), but, come on, a Bollywood remake?  Hell yeah!  It could only be a dreadful tone-deaf mess of a thing, and can you imagine songs being inserted into the story?  Dances!?  It would be magnificent, like Birth of the Dragon or any of James Nguyen’s films.  Obviously.

Well…

So, the plot of Zinda (translated into English as “Alive”) is pretty much the same as Oldboy: a well-enough-to-do man is unexpectedly taken prisoner and held for over a decade (it’s fourteen years this time) by a mysterious malefactor.  While imprisoned, he watches the world go by on television, practices martial arts so as to prepare for future vengeance against his captors, learns his wife and daughter have been killed, and consumes the same dish constantly.  Once he’s released, he teams up with a young woman to track down his captors and exact his revenge.

It’s not all the same, though:  Our protagonist is held in a different country (Thailand, to be precise), the woman helping him out is a cabby this time (rather than a sushi chef or nurse), and, most glaringly, said woman is not related to him.  Indeed, one of the key plot points of the original and even the American remake is left out of this one, allegedly reworked by director/co-writer Sanjay Gupta so as not to offend public tastes.  I can’t really argue with him there, as the incest bit tends to be the least well-received aspect of the film all around, but it does lessen the impact of the climax a bit.

Now, I know what you’re thinking (maybe): what about the musical numbers?  Well, on that front, I was simultaneously pleasantly surprised and a little disappointed.  There are indeed about eight songs featured in the film, but they’re not performed by the cast as in your usual musical, but rather set off into the background, flavor music not unlike the great selections from Pulp Fiction and whatnot.  Sure, this kept the serious plot going, but it also kept us from the sublime merriment such breaks would surely have brought with them.  Oh well.

As it stands, though, the film isn’t all that bad, really.  Sanjay Dutt does rather well as Bala, our Hindi Dae-su, and John Abraham is occasionally menacing as Rohit, this version’s Woo-jin.  On a purely heterosexual male id level, it was a delight to see the lovely Celina Jaitly and Lara Dutta, playing Bala’s wife and aid, respectively, working their feminine magicks throughout, but the odd blue haze that hovers over most of the film did detract from that a decent amount.  I’m not sure why this colorization is present, though I suspect it was an attempt to manufacture a bleak, dark atmosphere in spite of all the daylight.  Regardless, it was rather distracting.

At the end of the day, though, this is a remake of a modern classic, and it just doesn’t hold up to its progenitor.  It’s not truly bad, but the changes made to the story and the slightly uneven tone (the shifts from frivolity, especially in the early goings, to darker action and brooding are jarring and nowhere near smooth) preclude Zinda from being favorably compared to its source material.  Funnily enough, the rights-owners of the original Oldboy were highly suspicious of this film’s production, and allegedly began preliminary legal proceedings against it, but the studio in question, Show East, had gone out of business, so nothing really came of their concerns.  Still, I haven’t heard many people allude to this remake, possibly because it’s not as ostentatiously bad as Lee’s, so I guess being relatively forgotten is better than being sued, eh?

Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle

A few months ago, we were graced with the first of a trilogy of fully animated Godzilla films, namely Planet of the Monsters.  As a refresher (oh, there’s gonna be some spoilers here, kids), in that film, we see that Earth has basically been conquered by monsters, led by the Big G hisself.  The remainder of humanity, along with a couple of allied alien species, flees the planet, wandering about the cosmos until a suitable replacement is found.  As tensions rise aboard the ark (for lack of a better way of describing it), it returns to the Earth’s orbit, finding the planet completely transformed by its monstrous overlord.  A team is sent to the surface to take on Godzilla and succeeds.  Well, sorta.  Once the creature goes down, a second, much larger Godzilla comes from the distance, unleashing a mighty tail swipe and heat blast, proclaiming its continued suzerainty over the planet.

Which brings us to the film at hand.

City on the Edge of Battle (which sounds like a prog/power metal album, doesn’t it?) begins shortly where the first chapter left off, showing us that Haruo and his cohorts have survived, aided by a surprise tribe of surviving humanoids.  These folks thrive in this seemingly inhospitable environment, worshiping a deity in the form of an egg, and communicating with our heroes via a pair of twin females (almost makes one scratch one’s chin, eh?).  But this tribe isn’t doing much with our heroes, who have decided to continue with their mission to destroy Godzilla, regardless of the new, more dire circumstances.  Another surprise goads them on, though, in the form of the revelation that Mechagodzilla, a cybernetic weapon poised to take on Godzilla centuries ago until it was destroyed before it could be launched, may yet exist.  The search is launched.

Much like the previous entry in this series, the animation is mostly pretty good, though Godzilla’s movement continues to hardly live up to the term.  Sure, it’s more appropriate here than last time, given the monster’s massive scale, and one could argue that Godzilla is less traditional monster here and more a force of nature, but a bit more dynamism would have been extremely welcome, if you ask me.  The score, on the other hand, courtesy of Hattori Takayuki, steps things up majorly here, building to an exciting crescendo during the climax.  Resembling a more organic version of Uematsu Nobuo’s more bombastic pieces from Final Fantasy VII, the music really got me going for the dramatic action sequences and provided some exciting accompaniment for the sharp visuals.

The primary failing of the film, though, is a case of middle-chapter syndrome.  Much like The Two Towers and The Matrix Reloaded, this second part of a three-part series really feels like a second part, continuing the first part’s story and setting up elements for the third, and consequently not constructing much in the way of its own story.  This is the necessary filler that keeps the trilogy rolling, but it would have been nice to see a bit more from it.  Thankfully, the new universe this series has set up gets expanded, and glimpses of other monsters are provided, so, if nothing else, this chapter has succeeded in hyping up the final installment.

So, yeah, it’s still a solid film, but one that is incredibly middle-chapter-y.  Still, I find myself drawn into this story, and I really wanna see where it goes from here, given how things ended (he says, winking, knowing you likely haven’t seen the film yet, waiting for that time to come so that everyone’s in on the same allusion).

Shock and Awe

The history of courageous and pioneering journalists on the silver screen is a fairly storied one, all things considered.  One could argue the roots can go back to classics like Citizen Kane, and we’re given some strong paper-writing characters in flicks like Ace in the Hole, but we’re here to talk about true-life journalist stories (otherwise we could be here all day with otherwise unrelated fare like Superman).  For ease’s sake, we can get the ball rolling with All the President’s Men, the story of how Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward over at the Washington Post helped expose the Watergate scandal.  The Pentagon Papers got their own similar treatment with the made-for-TV The Pentagon Papers and the ever-so-slightly-more-prestigious The Post.  Individual journalists were given the limelight in Where the Buffalo Roam, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (say what you will about these, but Dr. Thompson was indeed a journalist), and Salvador.  Even broader scandals have been dealt with, like the Catholic Church’s covering-up of abuse in Spotlight.

Aside from the films following the gonzo exploits of Dr. Thompson, these examples, and usually the subgenre as a whole, tend toward the highly serious, showing us how the truth is often hidden and obfuscated until some plucky newsfolk expose it to the light of day.  Even massive cynics like myself have to hand it to the aforementioned subjects, as they truly did some good work that needed to be done.

Something tells me Shock and Awe was meant to be one of these films.  I say that because it very much is not.

Directed by and co-starring Rob Reiner, the film tells the story of the forthright Knight Ridder agency as it dealt with what would become the build-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  Much like the teams at the Post and the Globe diligently hunted down sources and hunches in order to get the all-important story, these guys put their noses to the collective grindstone in order to let the people of the US know that the Bush administration was following faulty intelligence and ignoring other leads so that they may go after Saddam Hussein in the ever-widening wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.

Yup.  You heard that right.  They were the only ones who were doubting the party line back in the early 00s.  I mean, I may have only been in high school at the time, but I distinctly remember quite a few talking heads (David Byrne possibly included) giving Bush and his cabinet the side-eye when Iraq came up, to the point that, at the time, a very popular conspiracy theory held that the Pentagon and the Twin Towers were attacked by the government so as to give an excuse to march into Baghdad (yup, trutherism was a thing even that soon after the attacks).  I can’t exactly say that the KR guys were all that unique in their views, regardless of what they tell us in the film.

Indeed, the characters constantly interject with jabs at various media outlets, particularly, the Post, the New York Times, and FoxNews, condemning them for just echoing the administration’s talking points and letting the government get away with whatever it wanted.  I mean, fair play, quite a few news outlets did just that for years during the War on Terror (is that over yet, by the way?), but it’s not like KR was alone in the struggle.  Moreover, the film doesn’t paint the endeavor like much of a struggle, anyway.  Sure, in the early goings, officials didn’t wanna go on record, but they never shut the investigation down.  Instead, the journalists just kinda kept at it, and things wound up working out jut fine for them.  This apparently shining beacon of journalistic integrity and courage did what no one else would and asked the tough questions … and got answers a bit slower than they would have preferred.  ‘Kay.

In fact, it seems like the bigger struggle was getting people to be outraged enough.  KR papers occasionally refused to run the stories, other outlets scooped them without the bombast of the underlying “conspiracy”, and relatives and friends (and friends of friends) got caught up in the patriotic/nationalistic fervor of the time.  Thankfully, one lone commando squad continued to shine the light.  Alongside all the others who did just that.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the basic idea is fine, and the government’s shady way of going about things in those days (yeah, like the government just started doing it then and stopped once Bush and the Boyz were gone…) deserved to be called out, but I’m not gonna fellate the Knight Ridder crew for pointing things out that even junior-in-high-school me knew.  Sorry, kids.

And the film goes out of its way to just ride their dicks about it, too.  Not since Get On Up and the sycophantic Obama bios have I seen such over-praising of real-life historical figures.  Reiner, Woody Harrelson, James Marsden, and even Tommy Lee Jones all act as magnanimous and holier-than-thou throughout, complete with heavy notes of smug moral superiority, while loved ones played by Milla Jovovich and Jessica Biel continuously pat them on the back, insult everyone else, and praise their boys.  It’s a bit much, lemme tell ya.

I can’t blame the actors, though, especially considering they did fairly well with the material, but the script from Joey Hartstone (thanks to whom I no longer wanna see the recent LBJ, also involving Harrelson and Reiner) just drags everyone and everything down.  We start off with a goddamn pointless training sequence, the lazy hack writer’s tool to shoe-horn in some early action without stressing the stars too much; we’re given a subplot about Marsden romancing his neighbor, Biel, with both of these smart, successful, attractive people being painted as kinda awkward about dating (even while Marsden is revealed to have been married and divorced before this); another subplot aims to show us the human toll of the decision to invade (I think that’s what this thread was trying to say, anyway) by showing us a young man enlist to serve is country in its drummed-up time of need, only to be caught in an IED blast that cripples him for life; and We Were Soldiers author Joe Galloway is brought in not just because he was in real life, but because we really needed to hammer home the notion that the War on Terror, specifically the Iraq portion (…wait…), is this generation’s Vietnam.  (Call me shallow, but there’s only one Joe Galloway I wanna hear from in this era, and he was busy catching footballs for a handful of teams.)  The dialogue lacks nuance and intelligence, there’s a persistent lack of tension and stakes, and everything is just so damned self-congratulatory that the characters come across as asshats instead of patriots.  Reiner’s insanely straightforward and glossy direction doesn’t help matters, nor does his self-important portrayal of editor John Walcott.

So, yeah, Spotlight and All the President’s Men this is not.  This is somehow worse than The Post, as at least that film understood what stakes are.  Perhaps some grit, some actual struggle, some humility would have helped, though likely only slightly.  As is, Shock and Awe neither contains nor elicits either shock or awe, especially compared to the myriad documentaries that told this story better from other angles.  This film is a waste of time, talent, and money, and I can only hope better journalistic stories come through in the future so as to wash away the taste of this one.

Sorry to Bother You & Leave No Trace

Unless you’re privileged enough to live in an actual bubble of sorts, it’s not out of the ordinary to hear some rumblings about how “the system” is broken.  Now, what “the system” means and how its apparent brokenness may or may not manifest itself are inherently subjective concepts.  What we have at hand here are two expressions of this feeling, along with some reactions to the respective system issues.  First, there’s Sorry to Bother You, which discusses the exploitative nature of modern predatory capitalism, as well as tossing in a bit of racial politics for good measure.  After that, there’s Leave No Trace, which tells the story of a veteran who reacts to his perception of a broken system by retreating from it.  They’re two very different tales, but their underlying points, as vague as they are, are very similar.

So, when I first saw the trailer for Sorry to Bother You, I was immediately intrigued.  I saw the basic story in that trailer: a down-on-his-luck schlub gets a job at a telemarketing firm.  There, he wants to succeed, but is stymied at first.  Thanks to some advice from a co-worker, he finds success by altering his sales approach – by speaking with a “white” affectation.  He watches the money roll in.

I thought that was to be the long and short of it.  Hoo-boy.  NOPE.  Now, I don’t wanna give much away, so I’m gonna haveta tiptoe about here, bear with me.  So first there’s a layer of baseline worker exploitation.  We see the call center workers get fed up with their conditions and the massive iniquities in quality of life between the peons downstairs and the “Power Callers” upstairs.  Their anger boils over into surges in the direction of collective bargaining, union formation, and striking.  Then there’s a layer of personal politics.  We see the importance of principles boldly highlighted, as well as a harsh repudiation of acting against one’s principles.  I also saw a side bit concerning how much one can subvert one’s principles in action so as to effect an outcome amenable to one’s principles, but it’s not as clear-cut as the other messages.  Then there’s another layer, one that takes things decidedly off the rails in a way I never expected from the film, regardless of the things already shown.  That’s all I’m willing to say, but, trust me, it’s wild.

While virtually the entire cast is solid, including Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Omari Hardwick, Steven Yuen, Danny Glover, and Armie Hammer (not to mention the voice work of David Cross, Patton Oswald, and the more surreptitious Lily James), it’s writer/director Boots Riley that really impresses here in his feature debut.  He’s raucous without being actively ridiculous, stylized without sacrificing a measure of reality, and somehow insanely direct without sounding preachy.  These skills are joined with the trained eye of cinematographer Doug Emmett (whose lens work you may remember from The Edge of Seventeen, Damsels in Distress, and Bachelorette, among others) and the effective editing of Terel Gibson (who has done cutting work on The D Train, We Are Your Friends, Little Miss Sunshine, and The Fighter) to forge a wacked-out vision of a broken system facing correction at the hands of those who have hitherto been exploited by it.  Stanfield does his marketing not through the impersonal phone lines but by crashing into his customers’ lives; Thompson takes pride in her ever-changing array of homemade subversive earrings; and vivid colors clash with the constancy of everyday life and its foibles.  It’s a sight to see, lemme tell ya, and the end result is a distaste for the currently prevailing way of the world and a desire to fuck shit up.  This is focused anger and frustration channeled into a visually arresting and emotionally and intellectually affecting film.  With a debut like this, one can only see bright vistas on Boots Riley’s horizon, and I eagerly await what he has to say next.

But while Riley is very clear about what system he’s challenging, the people behind Leave No Trace take a different tack.

Based on the novel My Abandonment by Peter Rock (not to be confused with hip-hop legend Pete Rock), the film gives us a glimpse into the lives of veteran Will and his daugher, Tom.  The two live off the land in an Oregon park, only occasionally venturing into the city for medication and supplies.  When they’re found, though, they’re thrust into a system of welfare and whatnot that changes how they regularly operate.

Writer/director Debra Granik and co-writer Anne Rossellini, best known for the Jennifer Lawerence-launching Winter’s Bone (it’s on my list, I swear), aren’t overly forthcoming with details, like what exactly Will suffers from or how the pair has stayed off the radar for so long, we just know that Will is a veteran with some consequent mental issues and he’s done fairly well by his daughter to this point.  Still, it’s very clear that the two are close, devoted to each other, and Will’s issues are spurring their rejection of the usual way of life.  We see just how much Tom has learned from her unorthodox circumstances, both in the way of knowledge and in the way of inner strength and fortitude.  In the absence of societal bonds, familial ones have grown with deep roots.

And for once, Ben Foster is allowed to actually spread his wings a little bit and so some actual acting.  He’s been severely wasted in many of his previous outings, including Inferno, The Finest Hours, and X-Men: The Last Stand, and only relatively recently has the industry caught on to his talent, as evinced by turns in Hell or High Water and Hostiles.  Here, Foster provides a powerfully subtle performance as a man with some harsh issues that he doesn’t give much voice to and a father striving to provide for his daughter in some harsh terrain.  Holding her own against the seasoned veteran is young Thomasin McKenzie, who brings the right amount of inner stability and outward wonder to make Tom really pop.

Cinematographer Michael McDonough’s lenses take full advantage of the verdant surroundings: towering, mossy trees dominate most of the outdoor scenes, bathing the tiny family in shady green, while the rest of the world appears more cloudy, gray, and unforgiving.  The film is mostly rather short on dialogue, allowing the natural grandeur and the actors’ interactions to convey the narrative, and the narrative is still rather powerful.

Though we’re never quite sure why he’s running from the system, but it is obvious that Will sees some inherent flaw in the usual system.  He’s not comfortable being a part of our society, seemingly in any appreciable capacity, and his rebellion is removing himself and his daughter from its clutches.  There is struggle involved here, and the positives society brings are lacking, but the resolve remains.  It’s a fascinating look into a mind fed up with the system, even if we don’t fully understand the reasoning.

Either way you wanna see the machine raged against, there’s plenty to like and to learn to dislike.  With the way things are going, it’s likely we will continue to see such stories, and if these are any indication, dark times can still bring some bright films.  Being ’em on.