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THE FAREWELL

My affection for this film, which I saw at the 2019 Atlanta Film Festival, and for what I feel is one of the most beautiful films I’ve seen in years, stems from the fact the audience, and the main character’s family in The Farewell, are in on the news that grandma, or NaiNai in Chinese, has been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. And instead of telling her the sad news the family decide collectively to not tell her. And gather around her, instead, for what could be last visitations, under the guise of cousin HaoHao’s wedding.

The Story: Billi, played by rap artist Awkwafina, hears the bad news from her parents. They are going to China to visit with the family’s matriarch, NaiNai, played with the sweetest humility, and with strong will, by Shuzhen Zhou. Billi is determined to go even though her parents think it’s better if she stays. Billi is saddened by the news, just as all of the family members are, and when they all arrive in China it’s under the pretense of cousin HaoHao’s (Han Chen) marriage to a Japanese girl (Aoi Mizuhara) who doesn’t speak Chinese. To make things a bit more heart-rending, yet also moving in a humorous way, is that NaiNai is determined to coordinate the wedding invitations and banquet for her grandson HaoHao, as she is always beaming with pride, and love, that her grandson is getting married.

The Goods: It’s this pathos and emotional stirring every time NaiNai is on screen demanding the best for HaoHao—the son of NaiNai’s second son—like insisting it is to be lobster on the menu, not crab, at the reception site for the banquet following HaoHao’s wedding ceremony, that makes the film so touching. To see NaiNai so excited, and happy, and thrilled that her family has gathered for the event, that her other son Haiyan (Tzi Ma, who has been in a ton of films and TV since the ‘80’s) has come, with Billi, from America, while knowing she’s dying, and that NaiNai is clueless (or maybe she’s not, it’s understood she is unaware) is such a powerful experience for the viewer that this “user event” in itself, in the theater, makes the film one of the best of the year, regardless of how it all culminates or how it resolves itself.

NaiNai’s joy and grandmotherly instincts with children and grandchildren is so universal. Like well composed songs that find fans everywhere in the world, she oozes a sense of goodness and care, historical perspective and set of rules that all grandmothers seem to have—she will discipline her family members like a mother/grandmother would—with a personal regiment of health tips and what might sound like “old wives’ tales” remedies that come across astoundingly accurate, realistic and true. She even gets Billi up in the mornings to practice her own self-created ‘NaiNai health regime’ that involves stepping around and yelling. Billi handles NaiNai’s routine with a dose of embarrassment, hesitant, but pushed by NaiNai she eventually embraces it if at times losing her composure, in the middle of street outside NaiNai’s high-rise building community, to laugh a bit.

Awkwafina, real name Nora Lum, who told me on the Atlanta Film Festival’s red carpet that though she is of Korean and Chinese decent, grew up in New York, in Queens, speaking only English. She had to brush up on Chinese which family members spoke but she did not. She said she was supported by the crew and cast who all helped her with her lines while filming on location in China. You would never know it. Awkwafina, in a more subdued role compared to her loudish, eccentric character Peik Lin Goh in Crazy Rich Asians (2018), or her cool, collected jewel thief Constance in Ocean’s 8 (2018), or preppy sorority girl Christine in Neighbors 2 (2016), seems like a natural here. Partly too to what Lulu Wang is doing with direction. The film is written and directed by Wang who adapted her own very true story from a short radio episode of This American Life called What You Don’t Know (Episode 585, https://shortcut.thisamericanlife.org/#/clipping/585/110?_k=dc1yj4).

There’s so much of what one senses is realism, like Wang’s radio piece, that the film is like a documentary, at least more so than Lulu Wang’s previous feature film Posthumous (2014). The two feature films are worlds apart and show with striking comparison the tremendous growth and innate talent Ms. Wang has for telling stories with such visual impact while sort of letting characters just be. None of the acting feels forced or rehearsed. And Awkwafina, whose character wants to say something about the deceit, confront the truth, discuss it with her grandmother, but chooses to play along, is a huge part of that. As is Ms. Lang’s real great aunt, Lu Hong, who plays Little NaiNai, the sister of Billi’s grandmother. Wang said that after some takes on set she would ask her great aunt if the scene felt authentic, in which Ms. Hong, knowing the facts of the real NaiNai’s condition, would provide her approval or criticisms thereof.

Ms. Wang’s instinct for camera placement and letting scenes play out while we observe is a comforting feeling. It presents itself as an easy film to involve yourself with. Certainly made in such a way that we too have a place at the table with the family, or in the rooms where scenes take place. Most of the shots are wide, and are master shots. The coverage for editing is simple—it’s not an action film—so capturing the truth in scenes, on location, is easier than forcing it in the editing room. We get to be voyeurs and not feel bad for staring or eavesdropping, but that we also, because we have grandmothers too, feel a part of this family. And since we know that she, the character in the film, and our own grandmothers, are only here for a limited time we should just enjoy our time with them while we can.

The Flaws: Curiously, there is a little bird that appears in Billi’s apartment, after she hears the news of her grandmother, when she returns to her apartment in New York after coming home from being out. Billi asks, “where did you come from, how did you get in here,” then she opens a window and lets the bird out. I get a strong sense the bird is exemplary or symbolic of NaiNai, or of Billi, or simply of life in general, action oriented flapping winged bird landing and wondering what its own situation is, compared to Billi’s, to ours. It’s nice. It’s sort of poetic. But it happens again when Billi gets to China, and it’s the same bird. Identical. As if maybe the bird followed Billi. And Billi doesn’t comment on it. The coincidence doesn’t become an issue with her but I think it is with the audience, because it’s not addressed. I’m distracted by it mostly because there is no explanation or character exposition enlightening us to something potentially special, and maybe supernatural, that has occurred here. And without a sense of a motif being established—like the magpies in the third season of the British TV show The Detectorists (what a random comparison), or any film or creative work where birds are a metaphor for the characters, or experience, in the story—we are sort of left wondering why the bird makes another appearance. Sure we can contemplate it all we want but it doesn’t do anything to help Billi or NaiNai’s situation. Or ours for that matter. Taking that second to process it distracts from this realism Ms. Wang has lovingly presented.

And there are traits of a music video, as a sort of denouement to the film, after HaoHao’s wedding and after the family members sort of part ways back to their corners of the Earth, leaving NaiNai with her sister, and live-in male friend, Mr. Li (who is comic relief in the film). Briefly, the family come back again in what seems like a “flashback” moment; as a collective they all walk down the street with strong steps, sort of like The Monkees, or The Beatles, something from a Richard Lester film, playfully, with vaudevillian moves and serious looks on their faces as they stare out of the screen at the audience, reminiscent of choreographed music videos from the likes of Britany Spears, or Michael Jackson, and virtually every music video in their wake, as if to say, here are the players in this play, these were the performers in this play—in this conspiracy—of family members living with the fact they lied and hid the truth from the family’s matriarch.

It’s a wonderful piece to the film but doesn’t exactly fit. And if there were other moments in the film similar to this then sure it would be more fitting. Or maybe even if it were over credits at the end of the film. Could be there are behind-the-scenes details that maybe production wise something didn’t go as planned, like if Awkwafina who is known for her rap music, if maybe she had a song for the film which Ms. Wang chose to not include. But the sequence itself, the music video moment, it’s a flaw in the sense it removes us from the realism of the film. It’s formalism and it’s noticeable at that. Coming at the end of the film however is the sequence’s saving grace.

Additionally, I did feel a sense NaiNai at times, in Billi’s conscious, is like Father Karras’ mother in The Exorcist (1973). There is a scene where Billi envisions her NaiNai in the subway, in New York, after Billi first hears the news of her grandmother’s diagnosis. I saw the similarity, and later in a Q & A after the film’s screening, Ms. Wang confirmed that she did incorporate traits from the horror genre. Smart, because those closed camera compositions and some of the centered character placements in rooms, combined with subconscious audible room tones, add a complexity to the emotional impact of some of the more serious or dramatic scenes where death is a true, hidden, ghostly antagonist. That NaiNai appears in Billi’s subway is almost too on the nose to William Friedkin’s mother Karras in The Exorcist. If you’ve seen that movie previously you’ll know it, and you’ll feel it, not as homage, not as a rip-off either, but as an accidental, subconscious placement by Ms. Wang that might slightly undermine her own original characters and story.

The Call: Spend the ten. The Farewell is a beautiful film regardless of very minor flaws. The sheer enjoyment of connecting with a family that is certainly yours as well as mine as well as Billi’s is a powerful achievement for Lulu Wang. The concept—a family who chooses not to tell their grandmother she’s going to die of cancer—is strong, script and production wise, even if some of what appears to be scripted may have been authentic cinema verite of Ms. Wang’s real family collaborating with actors. And as a wedding proceeds, what is usually a quirky, fun, family event in films—from the wedding film genre—it does so under false pretenses that are every bit bitter, corrupt and, conversely, the sweetest moments you’ll ever see. A perfect set-up for a lovely character to charm us out of our daily grind and give us back a sense of heart and soul if only for a few hours. And if NaiNai’s in on the news, knowing she might die, well that just shows how much courage she really has. Just like a grandmother, putting her family first before herself.

The Farewell is not yet rated. Running time is 98 minutes. A24 is distributing. In theaters July 12, 2019. Nationwide August 2nd, 2019.

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TULLY

This is multi Oscar nominated director Jason Reitman’s seventh feature film—Thank You For Smoking (2005), Juno (2007), Up In The Air (2009), being just some of them. It’s also his second film starring Oscar winner Charlize Theron (Young Adult (2011)) and his third time collaborating with screenwriter Diablo Cody who won an Oscar for her Juno screenplay.

The Story: Marlo, played by Theron, is a mother of two and has a third one on the way. Her husband Drew played by Ron Livingston (Swingers (1996), Office Space (1999)) is a busy guy at work but he helps out at home as best he can. It’s still a lot of exertion on the very pregnant Marlo—helping her six-year-old son Jonah whose autistic-leaning OCD is considered “quirky” by other adults, or trying to provide a normal school-mom situation for eight-year-old daughter Sarah—which prompts her very wealthy brother Craig, played by Mark Duplass (Zero Dark Thirty (2012), The League (2009)), to suggest a “night nanny,” someone who magically appears in the middle of the night to help with the newborn while mom and dad get some sleep.

Against her initial wishes and general feelings about having a stranger in the house, Marlo consents and Tully, the nanny, played by Machenzie Davis (The Martian (2015), TV’s Halt and Catch Fire (2014), Blade Runner 2049 (2017)) shows up bright eyed, young, and literary smart—in which she’s always quoting an author’s work as it pertains to life and, in particular, Marlo’s situation.

In general Tully’s whole vibe could be described as “granola,” a term Marlo might have used in her 20’s. Tully has a funny way of dropping in, to me, kind of like Robin Williams, as Mork (but on valium), popping in at the start of all those episodes of Mork and Mindy (1978). Maybe quirky is the better description for Tully, instead of for Jonah. All goes well with Tully, and Marlo seems to get her life back on track even though she knows this warm, calm, appealing patch in her life might end.

The Goods: The pregnancy and subsequent birth are almost everyday occurrences to Marlo and Drew, this being their third child; they display none of the usual nervousness, euphoria and joy that overcomes first time parents, mostly because they’re dead tired and probably more than we realize dreading what’s to come. Reitman does a good job of giving us their routine, and their Lego floor-covered house, while Marlo expresses very profane but excusable emotional outburst moments. Understandable for someone who might be past her due-date.

The first part of the film, probably the first fifteen minutes is almost documentary-like in the camera’s attempt to stay on Marlo and record her day. Something that is Reitman’s forte. Reitman himself says people can quickly spot “BS” and his job as a director is to provide the truth of the character, story and location which he seems to always do quite well. In that regard, once you add in the real-life comedic tones and the relationship themes, the situational and sometimes episodic nature of humanity, while still appealing to as economically wide an audience as possible, Reitman comes off looking more like the James L. Brooks (Broadcast News (1987), As Good As It Gets (1997), Terms of Endearment (1983)) of our generation.

Whereas Up In The Air is quite cold figuratively and literally, and the colors of blue and grey are so pervasive—in tone and hue—it matches the film’s characters and their dilemmas. Tully is the opposite, the palate is inviting, almost grounded, slightly cheery, earthy…it’s comfortable, yet the central character still has troubles. Troubles that seem to be set to an ironic color scheme, providing the film with quite a palpable subliminalness that makes you feel like things aren’t quite right. And they aren’t if you consider how perfect and idyllic events eventually build for Marlo. A recurring blue water, mermaid motif helps drive the point home that mom often feels “under water.” And that things are sort of brewing under the surface.

The Flaws: But the upbeat tenor to the film, that things have really changed for the best for Marlo, after Tully’s arrival, goes on for a long time. Usually something traumatic happens when goodness is at this magnitude. It’s part of the DNA of storytelling, that an event occurs that causes a shift. You just know that something is going to happen. And in most films it does, especially at a certain script point, in exact page count, on page fifteen or twenty, for a ninety minute film…ninety pages, ninety minutes. This film is right on the money in terms of beats and turns. I would check my watch every time I felt like we were taking a turn or hitting a plot point and it was pretty much right on—just about every fifteen minutes. The Cinderella story pattern of a staircase that continues to climb toward a crescendo. But while the film does have this fantastic timing in terms of plot development its pattern is more of an incline. A straight ride up with no downs, no insteps.

Tully’s biggest flaw, then, in my opinion is that that conflict laden moment, that huge turn for the worse, or major turn in direction—and conflict in general after Tully arrives—takes a very, very long time to land. We’ve been conditioned if you will to look for this, from all the films we see. And without it some might find Tully difficult to watch—difficult in the sense it’s all too good to be true, too sugary. I think Ridley Scott had this same dilemma in The Martian where there was no real doubt or fear for the audience that the character couldn’t overcome any obstacle. But at least he had obstacles.

That “conflict delay” in Tully, especially in the films longest act, makes for a distraction that does, very gently, remove you from the film. Even though, for me, Tully has a better delivery all around than The Martian, you still can’t help but wonder when will all of this positivity come crashing down. When will the drama appear. At the same time however, isn’t this how depression exists? Long periods of denial, camouflaged as a good time; masked by ecstatic moments? It’s probably not a coincidence then that I mentioned Robin Williams. May he rest in peace.

Too, I did see these defined breaks in Tully as episodes. And I thought for a moment, as a Hollywood film with a theatrical release, this is how you combat episodic binge viewable shows on streaming channels. A really good thing for theatrical releases, or, for tying into audiences’ stream awareness these days. You incorporate the episodes into the film.  And every “episode” in Tully seems to come with a zinger of a comedic punchline. These are Cody’s strongest one liners to date. And the script is so tight it can be held up as a model of efficiency.

But there needs to be more conflict as we head to that climactic moment.

The Call: Without a doubt Tully is a film to see in theaters. Spend the ten. It’s comedic, it’s dramatic, and it nails pregnancy and postpartum depression better than any educational video, movie or book I’ve seen or read. Diablo went to Reitman with the idea, he said it sounded good and she wrote the script in six weeks. She says she wrote from her own experience which is Cody’s gift. And Reitman says he, Charlize and Diablo being of the same age and sort of in the same boat of family and parenthood could work well with the script, as they did in Young Adult. In this regard Cody, and Theron, are able to provide for us the subtle and strikingly direct experience of pregnancy and child care like few others. And Reitman, Cody and Theron put this tender experience on a coaster, on a night stand, under a warm lamp, at bed time, as a night time story and glass of water…a glass half empty, then brimming, before we eventually quench our thirst.

Tully is probably Reitman’s most poetic film to date—once you see how everything pans out, that warm, orange glow versus the extreme cool, blue undercurrent—you’ll realize just how strategic and well thought-out the whole darn thing is.

Rated R for language and some sexuality/nudity. Running time is 1 hour and 36 minutes. Tully is currently making the festival rounds and will be released in theaters May 4, 2018. Jason Reitman made an appearance in Atlanta where Tully was screened as part of the Atlanta Film Festival.

By Jon Lamoreaux

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OSCAR NOMINATIONS 2018

I’ll throw this out there now—and said it when I saw it in 2017—THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI will take Best Picture at the 2018 Academy Awards on Sunday, March 4th, 2018. Here are the rest of KEY nominations and my very early predictions:

Best Picture Call Me By Your Name Darkest Hour Dunkirk Get Out Lady Bird Phantom Thread The Post The Shape of Water Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri – MY PICK

Best Director Dunkirk - Christopher Nolan Get Out - Jordan Peele Lady Bird - Greta Gerwig Phantom Thread - Paul Thomas Anderson The Shape of Water - Guillermo del Toro – MY PICK

Best Actor Timothée Chalamet - Call Me By Your Name Daniel Day-Lewis - Phantom Thread Daniel Kaluuya - Get Out – MY PICK Gary Oldman - Darkest Hour Denzel Washington - Roman J. Israel, Esq.

Best Actress Sally Hawkins - The Shape of Water Frances McDormand - Three Billboards – MY PICK Margot Robbie - I, Tonya Saoirse Ronan - Lady Bird Meryl Streep - The Post

Best Supporting Actor Willem Dafoe - The Florida Project Woody Harrelson - Three Billboards Richard Jenkins - The Shape of Water Christopher Plummer - All the Money in the World Sam Rockwell - Three Billboards – MY PICK

Best Supporting Actress Mary J. Blige - Mudbound Allison Janney - I, Tonya Lesley Manville - Phantom Thread Laurie Metcalf - Lady Bird – MY PICK Octavia Spencer - The Shape of Water

Best Adapted Screenplay Call Me By Your Name – MY PICK The Disaster Artist Molly's Game Logan Mudbound

Best Original Screenplay The Big Sick Get Out Lady Bird The Shape of Water Three Billboards – MY PICK

Best Cinematography Blade Runner 2049 – MY PICK Darkest Hour Dunkirk Mudbound The Shape of Water

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STAR WARS—EPISODE VIII: THE LAST JEDI

The 8th and probably most controversial Star Wars film—more so than Phantom Menace and its Jar Jar Binks, due to fan division on liking or not liking what director Rian Johnson (Looper (2012), Brick (2005)) has written and directed here—continues the Skywalker saga as the remaining Rebel resistance fighters battle the galactic Empire’s neo-Nazi-like step children, the First Order. Returning are newish characters from The Force Awakens, Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), Finn (John Boyega) and Rey (Daisy Ridley), as well as Luke Skywalker himself played by Mark Hamill.

 The Story: Rey, still struggling with her identity and new Force skills, finds herself living on a remote island with Master Jedi Luke Skywalker who doesn’t want anything to do with her story or any of the past Star Wars family members, saying as much, “the Jedi need to end,” and “this is not going to go the way you think,” when she asks him to help train her to be a Jedi. The First Order, led by Supreme Leader Snoke (voiced by Andy Serkis) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) push and retaliate against the resistance led by General Organa (Carrie Fisher) who fight to preserve freedom in the universe while escaping the First Order’s daunting weaponry.

 The Goods: The 8th Star Wars film continues down the path of Science Fiction and Fantasy genres, and exceeds in some areas here by breaking new ground. A hyperspace stunt by Vice Admiral Holdo, played by two-time Oscar nominated actress Laura Dern, shows what space wars are all about with the obliteration of giant space crafts and the reality of space which is that space is silent, there are no explosion sounds and the plu-plu-plu of lasers from space ships. There is a definite consistency here with space battle effects that occur across all Star Wars films. A bit of fantasy too, when The Force is awakened in certain characters, like General Leia, which you might liken to Mary Poppins or something from Harry Potter. Disney would like to think they’ve cracked open a marketing and deeper product sales egg with this move. It’s not that bad in the context of things. Especially knowing that Ms. Fisher passed away just as production completed on The Last Jedi, and as jolting and potentially joking a notion like this might be it plays off sort of sweetly and captures a Cinderella-like magic that was achieved quite well with Rey in the 2015 Episode VII, The Force Awakens.

 The Flaws: But the screen time we’ve had with all of these characters in the past, especially Rey and Finn, who had nearly an hour dedicated to them alone in the first half of the previous Star Wars film, is exceedingly diminished here due to new characters—Admiral Holdo, a mechanic named Rose Tico, played by Kelly Marie Tran, and a dude named DJ played by Benicio Del Toro (no relation to Marvel Comics’ The Collector)—who take up more time with their own sort-of intermingling screen time with previous characters. Plus we have more time with Luke, and Leia, deservedly so but still undeveloped and with questions unanswered, which the last of this trilogy, Episode IX, to be directed by J.J. Abrams, will certainly address.  Screen time is not necessarily the winning component to character development but it’s crucial in terms of getting a character to arc through a beginning, middle and end story-line, within scenes and within this “episode.” That we don’t have real character development here with any of the many characters leaves us a) wanting more, b) disappointed we didn’t get more, c) disappointed we left with questions unanswered, d) let down that we didn’t spend more time with those characters Rey and Finn from The Force Awakens, e) no real solid time with Luke and what he’s been up to, why he’s so upset about the Jedi, and what’s at the heart of what some might consider a cowardice attitude, and f) all of the above balled up in a nut shell of flatness and two-dimension. That last letter, F, should sort of reflect the grade this film receives too, due to poor character development. But it retains higher marks because of Johnson’s dip into nostalgia, and his grasp of the Star Wars universe as it exists now under the Disney umbrella—which is to say, maybe, let’s water this down for a wider audience and the next generation, for viewers who may have never seen a Star Wars film, let’s not go into too much detail, let’s provide some visual spectacle for the high price of seats, let’s give the old fans from the ‘70’s a little something, and let’s explore the successes of Twilight and Harry Potter films in the sense young adults are looking for characters to latch onto, to receive some sense of young romance to live vicariously through, and let’s not just sell toys the whole time but showcase a few key cool things the little kids can make wish lists with. Oh, and let’s always have an atmosphere and setting of general wonder that Disney can recreate at their theme parks. I hope that covers it all, because Disney was trying to do that too. And it feels like it.  

 The Call: None of which, or any of this really, has anything to do with finely tuned characters that we go into the theater hoping to lose ourselves in. I say spend the ten if you’re a fan, of course! But it’s not the best of the Star Wars films. By far. Many are comparing it to The Empire Strikes Back which that film still remains a better film, and one of the best in the overall main saga. Comparing just the number of characters in the two middle trilogy films, The Empire Strikes Back and The Last Jedi, you’ll find that The Empire Strikes Back has four or five main characters to deal with and maybe three or four ancillary characters like Lando, Chewbacca, Boba Fett, the droids, etc. whereas The Last Jedi has Leia, Luke, Poe, Finn, Rey, a new character, Rose, Holdo, Kylo, Snoke, DJ the Thief, and the remaining side characters and droids, not to mention cute cuddly penguin-like creatures called Pogs. That’s a lot. And there is more in The Last Jedi, General Hux, Captain Phasma…so, search your feelings…the Force is crowded with this one, and therefore not as personable as a Star Wars film usually is.

 Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action and violence. Running time is 2 hours and 32 minutes.

by Jon Lamoreaux

[focalwriterworks]

American Greetings E-Card: Cozy Christmas

Ideas submitted for what would be this American Greetings Christmas E-Card.

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American Greetings E-Card: You’re The Best

Gags written for this American Greetings Father’s Day E-Card.

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ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY

The path to new Star Wars stories has been carved and cut and whether you like this first one or not—the first live action Star Wars product to arrive outside of the Skywalker saga (and by product let’s call it Star Wars product B, C, or D to the original main series A)—it's a success for Disney. And though it’s different, let’s say it has a pleasant Star Wars veneer, it still works competitively well in the new episodic, binge watching digital TV and theater world we live in.

The Story: A band of Alliance Rebels—think French and British underground rebels fighting the Nazis in WWII—know the power and destruction of the Empire’s latest weapon called the Death Star. They must at all costs steal the digital blueprints of the planet-destroying spaceship in order to stop the tyranny of an army in possession of such a fearsome device. We do indeed see the Death Star’s strength in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) for which that film acts as a sequel, sort of, to this prequel. Central to the rebel endeavor is Jyn Erso, played by Felicity Jones, whose father Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) is one of the weapon’s creators.

The Goods: For the Disney business model, and for Star Wars fans, the film is a huge plus. There is already, and there will continue to be, endless products and programming as the Mouse that bought Luscasfilm for $4 billion in 2012 will be story-mining details of previous films and characters from those films for decades to come.  And this will be for all demographics and age groups regardless of whether those products are critically received or not.  Which brings us to this semi-inaugural film—not animated like Star Wars Rebels, the Lego Star Wars films or Star Wars: The Clone Wars—but linked in terms of the Rebels’ fight, in a space war, with the Empire just like all of the films and ancillary TV and game commodities before it.

Most diehard fanatics who were there in 1977 won't feel the same however, for Rogue One, as a younger crowd might but that's why rolling these new items out every few years is important—it’s a scientific, mathematic equation that Disney’s quantitative assessment analysts have forecasted accurately—that they will continue to reach out and appeal to a new generation at every turn.  But it’s important to point out, spoiler free, that they didn't ruin Star Wars. Disney and Rogue One director Gareth Edwards didn’t harm the Star Wars legacy or universe in any way, and that’s very important to know going into Rogue One.

The genius of all this is that it’s probably impossible to do so because the originals, Episode IV, V, and VI sort of exist in this historic vacuum.  Yes, in Rogue One they use props, tools, machines, wardrobe and uniforms from previous films—from the 1977 original, specifically—and used one of an infinite amount of moments from Star Wars lore for the Rogue One story but the rest as a whole is mostly a digression like you might see in a midseason episode of The Walking Dead, or Game of Thrones. That’s to say it’s not a massively impressive “episode” (like season five episode eight of Game of Thrones, Wildlings vs. Walkers) that makes you drool for more, or want to tell people about it the next day at work, even wanting to talk about it with people who don’t watch. Rather that Rogue One is more like one of those sort of book-to-TV adapted filler episodes with 70% talking and character development, and 30% action. Which still gives us the goods to keep us watching until next week though not as hair raising.

Though Rogue One is not as aesthetically pleasing or paced as well as Edwards’ other films, Monsters (2010) and Godzilla (2014), and I can’t believe I’m saying a Godzilla film is better than a Star Wars film, Rogue One is still well put together in terms of the story and plot territory it covers and the actual war battle sequences that ensue. The best parts of Rogue One are the actual “star wars” dog fights between the Rebel X-Wing fighters and the Empire’s TIE fighters, and blaster-laden land battles in exotic locations, which are extremely well done. And then there’s Darth Vader. Vader makes an appearance in the film, not a spoiler here because you see him in the trailers, but let's just say his appearance in the film and the lead-up to Episode IV is worth the cost of admission.

The Flaws: Edwards knows Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick well.  He is a student of great cinema, and you can see that in his other work.  Most of the awesome, wide vistas and images of great breadth we see in the trailers for Rogue One—very similar to use of great spatial dimensions on screen in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and found in John Ford films—are missing from Rogue One’s finished presentation and seem to be only found in production stills used in marketing and advertising.  In that respect the ads sell a completely different, expansive, wide screen creative work that is opposite of the quick, short, almost TV-like one we see in Rogue One.  

It is a well done cover of a Star Wars original, certainly not part of their flagship class A line.  To think they may have purposefully set out to make a Star Wars film, for the big screen, that doesn’t try as hard to be better than the rest is disappointing. Like purposefully not using certain John Williams created Star Wars score cues to amplify emotional moments as heard in the A films. Instead there is a completely new though familiar sounding accompaniment to keep the films separate, while visually keeping it all in the family, which defeats the purpose really. Especially when Rogue One needs that familiar Star Wars theme to help when solid character development fails.

In reality Rogue One is no different then something you might see in an NBC Heroes episode circa 2006, or Agents of Shield, or something from the early 2000's on the Syfy channel, like Battlestar Galactica from 2004. That is to say polished, action oriented with long sequences of dialogue for budget purposes. And while several “shows” from the ‘60’s, ‘70’s and ‘80’s paved the way for Netflix, Prime, HBO, Hulu and their bread and butter serial TV, Heroes and Galactica stand out as the kind of new kid on the block products these streaming channels gunned for. Rogue One could be a part of that category. Even though it’s not TV it certainly feels like it. Not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just not of the Class A Star Wars echelon we’re familiar with when we go to the theater.

Here’s what watching Rogue One felt like to me: since I mentioned Battlestar Galactica, if you saw the original Star Wars film in 1977, in a theater, and then a year or so later saw Battlestar Galactica, the movie, in the theater, you would understand what it feels like to see Rogue One. Sure they’re different, absolutely. And how can you compare anything to the original Star Wars. George Lucas sued the producers of Battlestar Galactica for certain technical similarities to Star Wars: A New Hope, and John Dykstra who was a special effects supervisor on A New Hope also worked on Battlestar Galactica. Regardless, one felt like the greatest space adventure ever while the other felt like the TV pilot space war surrogate that it was. And that’s sort of what we’re talking about here. Coming from a huge Star Wars fan.

Again, I can’t say enough of how much I appreciate and applaud what Disney and Lucasfilm have done. But it doesn’t mean there aren’t flaws. The major error for me in Rogue One (as if I haven’t been critical enough) is the very limited but highly visible use of computer graphics to create two well known Star Wars characters. It's great CG animation, don’t get me wrong, but it's also noticeable as such. So when the rest of the film looks incredibly real, in terms of old school model making and matte paintings, and shooting on location, when none of the characters are animated and along comes a cartoon you really know and feel it and it removes you quickly from the film. Not quite Jar Jar Binks distraction, but along those lines. More like in Tron: Legacy (2010) when Jeff Bridges' computer likeness appeared.

When George Lucas did this with the prequels, Episodes I, II and III, he interweaved an equal amount of human actors with computer generated ones and the finished product while at first was hard to swallow soon turned into a crafty, acceptable balance we learned to live with through those three films. Like watching a foreign film with subtitles, or a Shakespearean British drama, it takes a good fifteen to twenty minutes to get into it and assimilate the presentation. Whereas here when suddenly after an hour of solid human interaction we get an artificial actor well it just feels out of the norm. There’s not enough of it seasoned throughout the film to allow us to get comfortable with it. Sort of cool, yes. But it fails the movie in its disruption. Especially when compared to nostalgic, organic realism of 2015’s Episode VII, Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

The Call: Spend the ten. Regardless of my personal petty criticisms, as a long-time Star Wars fan, Rogue One has some hot action adventure sequences—though not as many as talking ones—and an appearance by the one and only Darth Vader (voiced once again, thankfully, by the great James Earl Jones). Kudos to Disney and Kathleen Kennedy, head of Lucasfilm, for successfully planning, executing and inaugurating the Star Wars Story line for Star Wars where we are sure to see a Star Wars story for everyone. And on every device.

Running time is 2 hours and 14 minutes. Rated PG-13 for extended sequences of sci-fi violence and action.      

By Jon Lamoreaux

[focalwriterworks]

JACK REACHER: NEVER GO BACK

Tom Cruise is back in action as Jack Reacher, the military police detective sprung from the pages of Lee Child novels, here again trying to prove a decorated hero played by Cobie Smulders is innocent, and who proceeds to beat to a pulp the corrupt opponents—Billy Jack style—who get in his way.

The Story: Former military hero and current veteran, and drifter, Jack Reacher (Cruise) literally stumbles upon a potential coverup when the wrongly incarcerated Turner (Smulders) is accused of espionage. Per usual, Reacher senses there’s fraudulent activity and takes matters into his own chess-player-meets-Rocky hands. I should say more like Rambo but Reacher prefers fists over guns and in fact act three of Never Go Back looks and feels like parts of Rocky III (1983). The catch though, in this film, is that Reacher could have a daughter; could, as a paternity suit has suddenly been filed against him just as he’s moving into action to solve another potential crime.

The Goods: That dynamic of trying to save one person and getting emotionally involved with what could potentially be his child—one that too, as you might imagine, could be in harm’s way—makes for some pretty intense scenes. Suspenseful to say the least. Samantha, or Sam, played by Danika Yarosh, is a young lady with a talent for art, raised on the street and just as systematically and logically smart as Reacher. Reacher is in fact impressed with some of her deductions, actions and dangerous antics, that yield positive outcomes for their cat and mouse situation even when frowned upon.

The Flaws: Award winning director Ed Zwick directs and he puts his camera often very close to the action. It helps that we can study the faces of the actors, and it helps budget-wise since you can’t really see much of the background of scenes, especially big chase sequences like what supposes to be New Orleans and a Mardi Gras like parade. Compared to other films that cover parades well, like James Bond’s Moonraker (1979), with a massive parade that takes place in Rio, or in Clint Eastwood’s Tightrope (1984), for example, this parade seems confined to an alley way and looks like it was filmed on a studio soundstage, which it probably was. The camera stays close, and closed, never letting us get a “big picture” per se of what reality might give us.

In a lot of ways this is reminiscent of a recent, similar Noir-ish type film with another aging super star Mel Gibson, Edge of Darkness (2010), where the action is kept to interiors of cars, apartments and back lots, and whereby cameras can’t help but catch stunt men and women with hair and body builds slightly ajar in the middle of fight sequences, enough to say hey wait a minute that’s not Cruise, or Gibson, and therefore we’re removed from the suspension of disbelief in the film.

This Reacher film, as opposed to the last one, seems small scale for Paramount Pictures, what is more like a meat and potatoes film for Cruise and his production company’s partnership with Paramount than his Mission Impossible films, which would be his bread and butter films. While Zwick—who is known for smoldering scenes between thirty something’s, from his series Thirtysomething (1987), to About Last Night (1986), to Glory (1989) with Denzel Washington and Matthew Broderick, to Legends of the Fall (1994), to the great Courage Under Fire (1996) gives us moments of decent one-on-one character interaction but falls short of delivering a truly moving experience mostly because the film concentrates on meeting a sort of B-film matinée agenda of cliffhanger moments and cliched bad guys in the shadows style of low grade action film. Just like Gibson’s Edge of Darkness, and countless other films—like some of those Charles Bronson revenge films—that give us blood, fists and guns but leave us wanting something more substantial. Surprising move by Zwick which is very much unlike him.

The Call: Spend the ten if you absolutely can’t find something else action oriented to see at theaters, which is most likely the case. Tom Cruise continues to be a bright star on screen but you get the sense also he received a ransom’s share of the budget and they made a small movie with the rest of the funding. You might be better off catching an almost higher level of car chase and action in Ride Along II, now on HBO.

Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, some bloody images, language and thematic elements. Running time is nearly two hours. Notice how Jack Reacher hangs out at diners and old school coffee shops? Probably my favorite aspect of this ‘50’s throwback character.

By Jon Lamoreaux

[focalwriterworks]

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN

Oscar winning actor Denzel Washington re-teams with his Training Day (2001) director Antoine Fuqua for a remake of the 1960 mercenaries-for-hire western The Magnificent Seven, based on the Japanese film Seven Samurai (1957) from the great Akira Kurosawa. Add Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio and Byung-hun Lee and you have a modern day western rat pack, sort of. Or should I say hat pack.

The Story: The people of the small mining town of Rose Creek are being bullied into hard labor and out of their land by one Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard) and his hired army of cowards. The very strong, and beautiful, Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett) hires ordained bounty officer Sam Chisolm (Washington) to rid the town of their pain.  An opportunity to get rich? Sincerely help or get revenge for Bogue’s past crimes? You’re not sure but as Chisolm assembles a team of crack pistol, knife and rifle specialists you get the idea he’s in it for more than money.

The Goods: Genre films are fun, and since there are so few westerns that get released annually it makes it double the fun, with the horses and the gun fights and the stunts, and the villains and the heroes, the good guys versus the bad guys versus the antiheroes verses themselves, verses their weapons and the shaky handed, poker playing, sweaty, sickly enemies, etc. All the trappings of a good adventure, popcorn film like we’ve seen in modern day takes on the genre, Tombstone (1993), Silverado (1985), The Quick and the Dead (1995), Unforgiven (1992) and Open Range (2003), among others.

The Flaws: Though it doesn’t come close to some of the film’s above, notably Unforgiven and Tombstone, it does offer entertainment in all the elements a true western offers.  No doubt about it, you get the sense people had fun making this movie; you can see it in smiles and laughter that almost seem candidly caught on film right before director said cut and the editor chose to keep those bits. But unfortunately the film errs on the side of The Expendables (2010) more so than Silverado even. More fun than the original, probably, but not as worthy in the end.  It’s cartoonish, comic bookish, and why not, being that it exists in the era of blockbuster movies about assembling superheroes.

Any director who sets out to make a western knows they must somehow pay homage to John Ford or Howard Hawks, and to a lessor extant John Sturges who directed the Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn version. Fuqua incorporates some framed doorway shots of our hero, much to Ford fan approval, as well as settings in Monument Valley. But the film needs more of that underlying poetry and less of the fast budget Hollywood serial-franchise stylings we see so often today.

A few huge mistakes: Fuqua attempts some close-ups, the kind you see in gun fight films like High Noon or any of Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name films, like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966), but drops the ball because camera position, lenses and lighting are not as ideal as they could be. Sam Raimi for instance in The Quick and the Dead took these western cliches and made them his own by manipulating angles, camera movement and tempo in editing to deliver something of what feels like an original product. Even Adam Sandler’s Netflix original The Ridiculous 6 expands from the genre’s tried, true and brewed, in a comical yet clever way. High Plains Drifter (1973) being the standout best to compare this film with, however.

The other part of this example is the casting of Sarsgaard. He’s portrayed as weak, slimy, yellow-bellied and sickly but haven’t we seen him and this character too often? I have at least, in Green Lantern (2011), Jarhead (2005), Flight Plan (2005), Knight and Day (2010)…his best film is when he just acts normal, Boys Don’t Cry (1999), or like in the underrated Very Good Girls (2013). The point is, Fuqua and Sargaard’s choices here go beyond ruining the film, they tell a tale of true talent that lies in what is perceived to be the eyes of visionaries, and they’re exposed for mediocrity—and very human—faults they have. Had they just studied more western films, twisted the characters a bit, dived deep into character, and maybe thought about approaching the villain differently, we might have a better film.

Maybe Nic Pizzalotto who wrote HBO’s superb first season of True Detective had a hand in sub par character development for the remake and is to blame. We see none of that smoldering, plot peculiarity of his HBO work either. But I’m going to stick with the casting of the villain. Only in great villains do we have greater heroes, and Chisolm at the end of the day is not as awesome as he could be. Partly because he doesn't—nor do the others—have full character arcs, or an enemy whose defeat gives them greater stature at the end of the day.

Music is the only saving grace. The score is nearly the same as the Elmer Bernstein original, who scored many a western but whose work on the original The Magnificent Seven makes it the most popular and familiar western soundtrack ever produced, one that would inspire the theme song to Bonanza and the rest of television for decades, exclusively the ‘60’s, '70’s and '80’s. Here, re-composed by the late great James Horner.

The Call: Spend the ten, but not the twelve, fifteen or seventeen. Meaning the film is just okay, the stunts and cast of heroes make it fun. Pretty difficult for Washington, Pratt and Hawke to do wrong here. Vincent D'Onofrio’s bear-ish mountain man character and choice of voice inflection however might be the sole reason for a night out. At the movies.

Rated PG-13 for extended and intense sequences of Western violence, and for historical smoking, some language and suggestive material. Running time is 2 hours and 12 minutes.

By Jon Lamoreaux

[focalwriterworks]

STAR TREK BEYOND

We revisit the ‘60’s TV look-alike crew of the Star Trek USS Enterprise as they continue their bold new mission to seek out new worlds, this time under the fast action direction of Justin Lin, known for rebooting the highly successful Fast and Furious franchise.

The Story: Written in part by comedic actor Simon Pegg (Scotty), among others, we find the Enterprise ambushed while deep into its newest space exploration. This forces the crew to abandon ship and while marooned on an uncharted planet Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) must both stir courage into his crew and battle a fierce new opponent named Krall, played by Golden Globe winner Idris Elba.

The Goods: Lin, never concerned with being the next Steven Spielberg but rather is more aligned and better than the Brett Ratner’s and McG’s of the film world, gives us the kind of action oriented Star Trek we expect. He does play with our expectations, a good thing, like with the Fast & Furious films, by seeking out near-superhero feats these caricatures of larger pop-culture figures can pull off. And when successful, which he is, we squeal with nerdy joy. The reason we love these Star Trek films is that the space ships are the same, the Starship Enterprise, is the same it has been in the last three films which is nearly identical to the 1960’s TV show. Cast and crew are meticulous in pulling this off and it's probably the main reason this franchise is currently sustainable. Hey, a good reproduction of vintage television with story and action we can tolerate and we’re good to go on many levels, as fans of the TV show, as Trekkies, and as an audience who can appreciate a good science fiction film. It also appeals to newer audiences who have never seen the original because the characters live in the present of the film's story, contextually, not portraying cut-outs or making too many references to character traits or episodes new viewers would't be familiar with. It doesn't over reach or go aver people's heads. The studio audience then is very aware of that as they continue to enjoy good box office numbers. 

We are on the other hand introduced to more creatures working for the Federation who fans will be pleased to see a similarity to Star Trek’s Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager—why not reboot or invent versions of all of these for the big screen—in terms of the richness and character depth that these new alien species bring to this rebooted franchise.

We have the usual adventure in space and on an unusual planet, and gadgets and ships and engines that fail…all the things we expect and enjoy about Star Trek; the hand-to-hand combat, which the franchise is famous for, and for which the director has successfully proven capable of in his other films.

The Flaws: Does it ever get old? Does it ever feel too familiar? Yes it does but the cast is made up of such incredible talent who not only pull off the physical stunts but also provide extraordinary fabrication, or imitation, of actor characters now long gone (this film is dedicated to original Spock actor Leonard Nimoy) that that sense of bizarro alternate universe is in itself still one of the treasures of the new feature length movies. Both Trekkies and non-Trekkies alike will eat it up. Because it truly is a blend of Star Trek and Fast & Furious which means that yes there are some vehicles our lead actors use to their fullest.

Inevitably, some of the make up and characters look and feel like creatures from lesser known and lesser received films like Elba’s Krall to me is too reminiscent of other space aliens, from Enemy Mine (1985), the similarity to Lou Gossett Jr’s character from that film, to Alien Nation (1988), and even in a comical way the stereotypical large headed aliens from Mars Attacks (1996) which all of these movie aliens are predicated on early B-cinema science fiction films. Movies that writer Pegg would be familiar with, or any director/writer researching aliens from film and TV prior. And per usual Kirk and crew get thrown around like rag dolls, not unlike any of the original series episodes but most similarly to the ‘Arena’ episode from season one, episode eighteen, 1967, where Kirk (William Shatner) fights the alien captain Gorn.

They are onto something with the retro uniforms and haircuts that touch on season three 1968 to 1969, from within the midst of our country’s Flower Power. But in Beyond they don’t take it far enough and the attempt just sort of distracts, confuses and takes away from the film even when the convoluted evil that dips into Star Trek’s patent ethics and equality file, and the conflicts that arise from that, are delivering insight into our own society the way the original series and modern spinoffs that followed always did.

The Call: Spend the ten. Fans won’t be disappointed. It’s better then the embarrassing Star Trek: Into Darkness though not as fresh as it could be. The cast continues to rock the imitation game which is entertainment alone—i.e. McCoy (Karl Urban) vs. Spock (Zachary Quinto), which could be a franchise one-off on its own—without the rest of the check-list trappings of the sci-fi genre.  This film is also dedicated to the young, late great Anton Yelchin who reprises his role here as Chekov. Probably the purest character I’ve ever seen created from an actor in at least a decade. Yelchin, it should be noted, was one of the rare, great actors of our generation, or any generation, that passed too quickly when Oscars and accolades were certainly eminent. See Alpha Dog (2006), Charlie Bartlett (2007) and Like Crazy (2011) as proof.

Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action and violence. Running time is a solid 2 hours. Also starring Zoe Saldana as Uhura, John Cho as Sulu and Sofia Boutella as newcomer Jaylah. By Jon Lamoreaux

[focalwriterworks]

X-MEN: APOCALYPSE

Director Bryan Singer is back behind the wheel in what is his fourth X-Men film as director. The good thing is he carries through and focuses on Oscar caliber actors James McAvoy and Michael Fassbinder in their respective roles as Professor Xavier and Magneto. The continued saga of a school of mutants is also a plus and should provide endless Harry Potter-like adventures.

The Story: What could very well be Earth’s first mutant En Sabah Nur (Oscar Issac), who also goes by Apocalypse, is awakened from an Egyptian tomb and pronounces his return as the God the world worships. Other, younger mutants such as Jean Grey (Game of Throne’s Sophie Turner), under the tutelage of Xavier, see an apocalyptic future from this “God” instead and must confront him with a team like X-Men mutants are known to do.

The Goods: The X-Men movies, in the final battle of all their movies, the climax per se, it’s usually never one villain against one hero. It is always a team effort. It is not Spider-Man against Green Goblin. It is all of the X-Men in battle against all of the villains. That is what makes the X-Men movies—outside of stand-alones like X-Men: Wolverine—so unique. And it’s what puts the films at risk of being a complete collage of computer generated pyrotechnics more distracting that focused. This film is no different. With the announcement of each new X-Men movie there is always that sense of excitement (that meets that sense of dread based on the mass of the discombobulated mess director Singer has left behind in X-Men films of recent past). Outside of the first X-Men movie, and 2011’s X-Men: Frist Class directed by Matthew Vaughn, much of the X-Men cinematic experience has been disappointing. Because of such committee fighting that takes place in these films and the lack of specificity within one hero, or one storyline. But I can almost say that Apocalypse is one of the better films of the franchise because it revisits the theme of mutant individuality combined with the familial support that Charles Xavier’s school offers for those who genuinely need support. And that is the film’s heart. It’s a good one. And it offers an infinite amount of possibilities that schools filled with potential superheroes, or magicians, or geniuses as in Real Genius (1985) can offer.

And to help sell all of this to audiences, who spend upwards of $15-$18 a ticket, and seven dollars for a small popcorn, is the extraordinary talents of Oscar worthy actors such as Fassbinder, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, and McAvoy. Rock star actor Isaac plays the bad guy well and newcomer Turner is the precious ring that binds them all together. Yes this X-Men more so than the others has a Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter feel to it. That mutants can be perceived as Gods, and that they can get into your brain are all familiar conflicts. And to soften that strong whiff of “repeat” is retro costume and production design coupled with special effects that give us something to look at at least knowing we’ve “seen” this all before (once again, Quicksilver steals the show). Fox Film Corporation is smart to cultivate the school aspect in which there is a universal familiarity in that everyone at least starts their lives going to school, the ideas of learning and education and growth are noble and strong ones; a foundation we can all get behind helps in grounding such far-fetched concepts that most of what Singer’s X-Men incorporates. In comparison to Matthew Vaughn’s X Men: First Class. In X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) then with Singer back at the helm we could see how the foundation of worthy thespians sort of crumbled under Singer’s penchant for big blockbuster stylings, reversing the franchise back to a shallower explosion and spectacle heavy storyline that combined the old and new X-Men casts. Apocalypse it should be noted has no Sir Ian McKellen or Patrick Stewart (though it does have one other “original” guy, not saying who) that without them returns us to Vaughn’s template of First Classers providing a book end to this latest trilogy. While of course preparing us for something more that hopefully might continue from this younger crew. I will say the sand and Mummy-like feel of hypnotic eyes and music score stemming from an Egyptian setting is a motif that works here for Apocalypse, and I crave more of it.

The Flaws: And by younger too I have to say it also looks and feels at times like television episodes. So much is presented and comes and goes so fast it’s like cramming down a season of Netflix Marvel in one binge session.  I do believe that production standards have changed so much with the immediacy of digital photography and editing that can be done overnight while the next day’s footage is being shot.  That “rush” is felt in this film.  I’ve been seeing a different sort of production value in these blockbuster summer comic book action films for a while, whereby they are finding their stride in combinations of green screen, video and rapid fire computer generated coverage that supplements the limitations they may have with actual action hero photography. Audiences were once satisfied with real stunt scenes with stunt actors punching it out, to what is now editing versions of that with added video game simulations and what could be the best of the best of Nickelodeon, Disney and Cartoon Network animation complications. I think the Man of Action Avenger and Spider-Man animated series are a perfect example and set the tone for precisely what I am describing that is a success in animation but fails in movies like these.

I get tired too of these X-Men who float with arms extended while they manipulate the seasons or the objects around them and we are all supposed to stare in awe just as the humans in the films do when they see this silliness. Gods and monsters is an old motif in comic book movies but yet here we go again.

Some sense of reality is what makes the best fantasy and science fiction films work. The further you get away from that, without grounding the audience in a substantial amount of content prior to the adventure, can bring any big budget film crashing to earth like so many buildings and fortress-like structures that litter these kind of films. Jupiter Ascending (2014) is a prime example. Versus something like Aliens (1986) or Iron Man (2008) or Spider-Man (2001) or for sure 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) which is exactly the kind of realism-based fiction I’m talking about. This realism “ointment” is what makes comic book origin films so successful. The further Bryan Singer takes us from reality then, with his style, not screenwriter Simon Kinberg’s writing, the harder it is for us to maintain an audience’s suspension of disbelief, or what I call popcorn composure.

Why a blue man as the villain? Who looks like Mr. Freeze from Batman And Robin (1997), or Thanos in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), or Ronan the Accuser from Guardians to be exact. Doesn’t Singer watch movies or read comic books?  Maybe he’s trying too hard to stick to the comic books. But if that’s the case why couldn’t he and Kinberg agree to separate themselves as far from familiarity as possible so that all of this isn’t as redundant as it is for audiences.

Could it be too that when writers use these mutants as a means to make the script work—i.e. teleportation and time travel—that we as an audience sense the exploitation and feel as manipulated as the characters are? Another byproduct of non-realistic storytelling, and having so so many mutant characters at a writer’s disposal. I think subconsciously we sense that, that these non-A-list mutants never seem to get their full story told, that they are in limbo within the context of a film’s 90 minute to two-hour time constraint without closure in this sequel or that one, and that inevitably it’s going to feel like an episodic TV show. Where is the closure of the Columbos and Scooby Doos, or the lessons learned by a character from a Flintstone episode within these flawed films if as I surmise we’re following some kind of television paradigm?

The Call: Stow the dough. X-Men fans will like it but the rest of the movie going audiences will most likely be bored considering its huge 2 hour and 23 minute running time. There’s really nothing here we haven’t seen before. Though I’m grateful McAvoy and Fassbinder are still on board.

Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence, action and destruction, brief strong language and some suggestive images.

By Jon Lamoreaux

[focalwriterworks]

CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR

Directors Joe and Anthony Russo have come a long way and excised themselves quite nicely here from their 2006 comedy You, Me and Dupree. I couldn’t rightfully say that with their previous Captain America outing, Captain America: Winter Soldier. But with CACW they and a few choice superhero stalwarts put Marvel back on the entertainment map.

The Story: Members of The Avengers—excluding The Hulk, and Thor—find themselves answering to the world for their actions. Casualties of war and loss of lives fighting Ultron in Sokovia, for the most part, but also Hydra in Washington D.C. and in this film Nigeria, force the U.N. to draft an Act, a treaty of sorts, for The Avengers to sign allowing the U.N. to mediate and dictate what our heroes can and cannot do in future turmoil. The team is divided and it forces discord of sorts between our heroes though they are still friends. Sparking further division is Bucky Barnes, a.k.a. The Winter Soldier, played by Sebastian Stan, who folks believe still terrorizes peace initiatives. Steve Rogers, Captain America as we know him, played again by Chris Evans, believes otherwise and recently conscience-grown souls like Tony Stark / Iron Man, played by Oscar nominated Robert Downey, Jr. think Cap should stand down. When the straight-laced, honest soldier doesn’t Tony recruits a team of like-minded heroes to help contain the Captain, who likewise gathers his own spectacular team.

The Goods: These “teams” drive much of the second act of the film.  With Winter Soldier on the loose and Captain America seemingly a traitor, to some, you know it will take an army to bring him—and Bucky—in.  There are some new recruits in this “civil war.” Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) who is a new peace keeper on a mission, favors the idea of jailing Bucky and whoever stands in his way; same goes for War Machine, or Roadie, played by Don Cheadle who is Iron Man’s wing man. Cap has a wing man too in Falcon, a.k.a. Sam played by Anthony Mackie (one of my favorite actors in the bunch), and the list goes on.

This gives the film paths and framework that help build plot and move us forward, ultimately delivering a sort of joy we find in origin films…that sense of discovery does exist outside of seeing a superhero’s birth, take note Sony for all of your Spider-Man reboots.  Sony, who retain the movie rights for Spider-Man, do surprisingly allow Disney to borrow him here, played by Tom Holland—that when two superheroes meet, when two good guys meet, or even when two bad guys meet, the spectacle of seeing them out-muscle each other, or even out jaw each other in conversation, it reveals inherent properties of character that are otherwise and often lost in just simple clichéd knock down drag out fist fights.  Had Batman sat down over coffee with Superman in Batman v Superman, to discuss and marvel at one another’s feats of super-manliness, and share stories of exploits in each other’s respective cities, we’d have a completely different and more entertaining film.

That that is the key in Captain American: Civil War that makes much of this enjoyable, much more so in my opinion than the other Captain American films. Taking that “origins feel” up a notch then is the superhero, or heroes, wowed by another superhero.  And I’ll just throw Ant-Man out there while I’m discussing this since the lovable “average Joe,” Scott Lang (played by every-man actor Paul Rudd) is a fan of all these guys…he gushes when he meets Captain America, rightfully so, whose side he aligns with.  Playing off of our expectation too is the superhero who surprises us with tricks they’ve not quite expressed in their other films. And when successful we are giddy all over again.

The other good of this film is the theme. That our heroes express a conscience toward the loss of lives and that they genuinely feel sorrow for what has transpired as a result of friendly fire on the battle field makes them all more rounded than they usually are.  This adds a rich dimension to the film that motivates many of them to find justice and try to prevent as much loss of innocent lives as possible.  After all this is what makes superheroes super.

The Flaws: It can be a flaw too when the character that most of the film, and plot, hinges upon does not show the kind of full array of emotions, or personality continuum that some of our other favorable characters do. What makes Tony Stark stand out in CACW—and what probably sold Downey on reprising his role once again—is that his character goes through an entire arc and appears in the end multi-dimensional and round. He more than any character is sort of at the heart of the film too and his character is the through line of the entire film.  You need that when telling a story.

Black Panther and Scarlet Witch, a.k.a. Wanda Maximoff, played by Elizabeth Olsen, and Spider-Man all sort of have complete mini movies.  Whereas Bucky, who yes as Winter Soldier has done some heinous things, doesn’t come around as fully developed as we’d like.  Yes there’s humor built around his friendship with Rogers, and new acquaintance with Falcon—Bucky, as you recall, is a good guy at heart—but he still in the end is sort of two dimensional.  Maybe in the next film we’ll get more?  At least that’s kind of the way Marvel likes to keep things sometimes.  I hope not, because by the end of CACW I’m done with Bucky as Winter Soldier and expect us all to move on.

I’ll say this too, binge watching comes to the multiplex.  It’s as if at times in CACW I feel we are watching episodic TV. Because there are so many characters, and a rather complex plot—which I like—when we transition or end with one sequence we get a very pronounced dramatic exit by way of musical score. It’s so heavy and palpable it feel just like ‘70’s and ‘80’s TV action shows like The Fall Guy, MacGuyver, The A-Team…do you remember that twinkling, progressive musical transition in Charlie’s Angels?  That’s kind of what you get here, though not as bright. Even the old ‘60’s Batman show where we leave our heroes with a cliffhanger, that’s the way most of the “episodes” end in CACW. Cliffhanger 101.  Going way back to 1930’s serial reels at the movies. It’s a distraction to me even if Disney does this on purpose to somehow sync their Netflix originals to the big screen.  While I do enjoy quality TV I say try to avoid any hint of TV in your movies when you’re selling tickets for popcorn and theater seats.

The Call: Spend the ten. There is a ton of superhero spectacle to gaze at here and some laughs to accompany conflict, which always makes for better escape at the movies.  The theme too of superheroes who really do see, and are affected by, the consequences of fighting for peace and freedom makes the film more eligible for younger audiences than I might otherwise recommend.

Rated PG-13 for extended sequences of violence, action and mayhem. Running time is a long 2 hours and 26 minutes.

By Jon Lamoreaux

[focalwriterworks]

BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

In this sequel to 2013’s Man of Steel, two-time Oscar winner Ben Affleck gets a turn at playing Batman in what is additionally a ramp-up of DC Comics’ Justice League. This will be Warner Brothers’ attempt to cash in on a live action Avengers-type franchise that will create additional stand-alone superhero movies. The real hero here however is Henry Cavill who solidifies the big screen Superman role left hollow for decades after Christopher Reeve’s portrayal.

The Story: Bruce Wayne (Affleck) is there the day Superman battles General Zod in Metropolis, at the height of conflict in the film Man of Steel.  Or the city could be Gotham.  They are twin cities apparently, like Minneapolis-Saint Paul, but either way the city’s destruction that Wayne sees infuriates him since after his parents’ death at the hands of a criminal he has taken on vigilantism as a dark crusader dressed like a bat—Batman as we all know him—to seek out, capture and punish all who break the law.  Including God-like aliens wreaking havoc on the city.

Wayne’s obsession with demolishing Superman (Cavill), and Clark Kent, a.k.a. Superman’s obsession with catching Batman keep the duo distracted enough to allow for master criminal Lex Luther, played with sort of a Joker-esq craziness by Jesse Eisenberg, to make his big criminal mark on the world.

The Goods: This is director Zack Snyder’s (Man of Steel, 300, Sucker Punch, Watchmen) interpretation of Batman, the first since Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. And while this caped crusader, the one in black not red, is played by an entirely different actor, one that may take some getting used to mostly because he’s so recognizable as an Oscar winning screenwriter (Goodwill Hunting) and director (Argo, won Best Picture), and actor in big Hollywood films, it’s his Bruce Wayne that makes a difference.

Portrayed more as a James Bond playboy than a successful entrepreneur, with a Batmobile by night (that looks to sit on a Corvette frame), and a vintage 1957 Aston Martin MK III by day, he is bigger, taller and bulkier than all previous Waynes.  Not that Batman has ever been portrayed as a hulking figure, outside of Frank Miller’s comic book version from the ‘80’s, and the subsequent animated series, which Affleck most resembles.  But that he is so here makes a difference since we’re getting a new interpretation prior to rushing into this Justice League DC subsidiary venture. And Wayne is angrier than we’ve ever seen him, thanks to Affleck’s delivery of angry, rich, orphaned kid panache that Snyder does a decent job introducing us to via flashbacks to Wayne’s boyhood memories of his parents’ homicide.

Though fans of Batman have seen this back story several times, Snyder uses it here to give us a dark, devil’s contrast to Superman’s God-like imagery…that imagery is probably the best “art” in the film that carries over from the alien introduction in Man of Steel. Angel and God iconography is scattered throughout Batman V Superman giving it something that goes beyond your average superhero film.  It is a reminder in many ways to Snyder’s graphic novel film Watchmen (for which The Comedian in that film, played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, here, also plays Wayne’s father, no relation).

It’s not just Batman and Superman, either, as the title suggests…let us not forget the Dawn of Justice part, which becomes Justice League, or as some know it, The Justice League of America…first found in DC All Star Comics Winter Issue Number 3 (1940-1941) as Justice Society of America and included (The) Hawkman, The Atom, The Specter, The Flash, Dr. Fate, The Sandman, (The) Green Lantern and The Hour Man.  While Warner Brothers may not use all of these characters, they will however roll these stand alone and ensemble films out indefinitely just as Disney gives us the Marvel and Star Wars films.  In Batman V Superman though we are introduced to Diana Prince, a.k.a. Wonder Woman, played by Gal Godot (Fast and Furious, Fast Five and Fast and Furious 6), with a smattering of Aqua Man, played by Jason Momoa, The Flash, played by Ezra Miller, and Cyborg played by Ray Fisher, which are all introduced in a disappointingly undeveloped short aside—from a flash drive file by way of email scene—but introduced to us nonetheless.

The Flaws:  There are many flaws, most of which I can’t possible cover in detail here: story predictability, shallow character development, nonsensical dream sequences and clichéd monster effects, weak, network TV, non-event introduction of Justice League characters, and what I perceive to be rushed and faulty photography and production design choices due to budget and time constraints.  It’s the latter of all these where I think most of the blame of “what went wrong” in Batman V Superman can be assigned, what I call two steps forward for Snyder with Man of Steel and one step back with this film.

Man of Steel had a distinctively mature look and feel to it compared to Snyder’s other films; brighter, shot mostly in day light, seamless visual effects because of that higher key lighting, and a poetic touch not seen in Snyder’s other films…softer ancillary shots of door knobs and screen doors, wheat growing in fields, porch swings and emotional moments in Clark Kent’s memories of an American childhood in Smallville that was photographed and lit in ways we don’t see in Batman V Superman.  In contrast, Bruce Wayne’s story and his memories here are darker, granted, due to the childhood trauma he experienced.  But his past visual imagery is filtered, like with filters on the camera lens or effects added in post production, that muddy the film, in addition to darker lighting in general and tighter, night-time photography that is a stark difference to what cinematographer Amir Mokri did for Man of Steel.

What cinematographer Larry Fong, and production designer Patrick Tatopoulos’, do in Batman V Superman is take us back to Snyder’s heavier, flaw-laden visual effect films Sucker Punch and Watchmen, where content and substance tack a back seat to Snyder’s MTV music video style, a director’s vision that inevitably involves extreme slow motion in intense action sequences, mostly with David versus Goliath character situations, i.e. 300.  We have that here in buckets, but also extreme shaky hand held and tight camera movement in such darkly swathed lighting that we are so visually impaired we can’t really enjoy the nuances of fight scenes or action sequences.  Compare that with Christopher Nolan’s Batman films and the shadowy precision, “glowing,” see-through-the-dark-obscurity of Oscar winning cinematographer Wally Pfister (Inception).

Chris Nolan produced this film, as he did Man of Steel, and I’m glad he’s executively helming this franchise.  Many of the other key players from Man of Steel are the same as well: editing by David Brenner, music by Hans Zimmer (though convoluted and leading plot development like bad soap opera television), and writer David Goyer.  But cinematographer and production designer are different and the film is lesser because of it.

Lesser than what?  Man of Steel for one, Nolan’s Batman films, two.  But ultimately it’s a budget choice that can’t be solely rested on Fong and Tatopoulos, maybe not even Snyder; that we have more actors we need to pay now because of the superhero ensemble, and because each requires a decent origin/introduction, that we need to have visual effects to stay competitive leads us to make choices fenced by the amount of money we have to spend.  Which is ultimately why I think Batman V Superman is palpably dark (studio and green screen effects are easier with a night setting) and shaky visually to hide possible production flaws.

Speedy studio vs. location shooting production like this helps too if you’re making several movies at once which I believe is also what is happening here; Wonder Woman is in production, as is Cyborg, Flash, Aqua Man and a Ben Affleck Batman series.  All are currently in production.  It’s smart, if you’re looking to release one film a year, but I think ultimately it will hurt the integrity of what Chris Nolan has done; everyone will compare and the comparisons will fail.  Until Nolan does one himself.

Maybe Fong works faster than Mokri; maybe Mokri and Snyder don’t get along; maybe Mokri is busy on Michael Bay’s next Transformer film.  The excuses are endless.  But I do believe, based on what I’ve studied and seen in scrutinizing art in film is that who does what in these big budget, big screen, big hype films is crucial to their success.

Films that pit previously known stand alone characters against one another, even for the film’s title alone, are indicative of less significant, schlocky B films from the 40’s and 50’s.  Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, King Kong vs. Godzilla, Alien vs. Predator, Freddy vs. Jason…are exemplary of studios trying to suck the last morsels of life from dying franchises.  I don’t think the title Batman V Superman sits well for audiences.  It’s confusing.  But in the comic book world it happens all the time.  And I think Warner’s research showed that calling the film Justice League, or Dawn of Justice League, without the kind of end credit build-up Marvel gave The Avengers, would not sell as many tickets.  Putting Batman in the title, and Superman, however, does.

The Call: Spend the ten.  Though it’s predictable, too dark to really enjoy the visual details of, and reminiscent of lesser big adventure visual effects films like Clash of the Titans, Batman V Superman is a Superman movie with a strong Superman through-line which includes Superman’s familiar, Man of Steel friends Lois Lane played once again by Oscar winner Amy Adams, and an enhanced, comedic performance by Laurence Fishburn as Daily Planet newspaper editor Perry White.  Kent’s parents played again by Kevin Costner and Diane Lane also return.  And it introduces us to Wonder Woman. A first for big screen live action DC films.

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action throughout, and some sensuality.  Running time is an absurd 2 hours and 31 minutes.

By Jon Lamoreaux

[focalwriterworks]

DEADPOOL

This mid-February Valentine’s Day weekend Disney Marvel release, which broke the record for 3-day R rated film earnings, is still making money. A month later it’s at $709 million globally, made for a measly $58 million. By far Ryan Reynolds’ best box office outing in a role he was made for. Other than a yet to be realized Fletch reboot.  

The Story: Deadpool is not the first R-rated Disney film for sure, nor is it Marvel’s. The R-rated The Punisher (2004) and Deadpool are sort of akin in their revenge stories, though Deadpool is a guy in a superhero costume close in working relationship to X-Men’s Wolverine (from their mercenary past). Wade Wilson, played by Reynolds, is a fast talking, wise cracking muscle-for-hire who sort of dropped out of the more intense mercenary business seen in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) and is now paid to protect and serve the little man on college campuses and around the city.  Like all superheroes he falls in love, here with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), and thinks about really changing his life until he discovers he has an incurable disease.  Due to die at any moment and with the prospect of never spending another day with Vanessa, he takes an offer from a slimy guy representing what is probably a slimy power hungry crime boss to cure his disease. As always there’s a price. This one includes mutated genes and a torture chamber that leaves him scarred for life.  But more powerful than ever.   

The Goods: Deadpool is better than expected, since it is X-Men related, self-referential, violent and funny.  Marvel movies are sort of saved by the R-rating here because it’s my opinion that folks are getting cheated by the sort of even-keeled, uneventful, cliched Marvel films of late such as Captain America: Winter Soldier (2013) and The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2014). While I do like the simplicity and near G-rating of films like the recent Ant-Man (2015), which seem more wholesome and explore intellectual traits that result from lack of violence and dumbed-down popcorn visuals, Deadpool is just in your face violence and wisecracks.  Which is total escape, and sort of relaxing in a weird way. This is really what we have come to enjoy about the comic book characters we seek out and enjoy reading.  It’s a spectacle you don’t see every day, nor hear dialogue from, on a regular basis these days, from Marvel or Disney.  Or DC/Warner Brothers. 

Also, this film more than any of the other Marvel films has more of what I call a Fletch feel.  Fletch being the 1987 comedy starring Chevy Chase, that filmmakers, like Kevin Smith, have explored remaking.  Including Reynolds who would reprise the lead role. Fletch is an investigative journalist who changes his voice and appearance often, not unlike Peter Sellers in a Pink Panther movie, to find the dirt on drug pushers or nefarious corporations and criminals.  Lines like this, when asked by a country club waiter if he is a guest of the Underhills, which he responds yes, and then, “I’ll have a bloody mary, a steak sandwich…and a steak sandwich.” As if that is a normal menu order, comprised of two orders, both being the same thing…okay not a good example. But when approached by a business man on the beach for a proposition, he asks, “Does this entail me dressing as Little Bo Peep?”  No?  It’s in the way it’s said, underpinned, subtle, off-handed.  That is the way Wilson, Deadpool, talks. The whole time. And it’s quite endearing. Even if it is sort of in the vane of every snarky, witty, observant, remarking annoying character Reynolds has played since his beginnings on the late ‘90’s TV show Two Guys, A Girl And A Pizza Place (1998). Again, there are many clichés here, much of what you see on screen in terms of action, it’s not unlike anything you've seen before. Although the plot in storytelling is scrambled in such a way that it makes it far more interesting than the usual origins film.  Not enough films play around with the time line or the fourth wall, which often has our hero addressing the audience, as Deadpool is quick to do here.  There is a tiny reference to Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), which makes this movie also celebratory in the fact it's been 30 years since the Ferris Bueller release. So pitching the idea you could almost say Ferris Bueller meets X-Men by way of Spiderman but it’s a love story. With guns and Katana swords. Some jokes fall really flat, so flat they could empty a room. But there are so many jokes and I mean volumes of jokes the good many far outweigh the few bad ones.  Mostly the good ones are self-referential pointing out X-Men flaws and breaking fictional lines by poking fun at the X-Men films, including references to Professor Xavier’s actors James McAvoy and Patrick Stewart.  Wilson’s friend Weasel, played by equally funny, same-vane-of-humor, Reynolds carbon copy, is Silicon Valley’s T.J. Miller. The Flaws: Speaking of X-Men, there are some representatives of the mutant superhero group who try to recruit Deadpool.  He tries to stay independent and neutral until he needs their help.  Colossus voiced by Stefan Kapic, who is a computer animated Hulk-like figure, and Teenage Warhead played by Brianna Hildebrand who as Deadpool likes to point out looks like the ‘80’s version of Sinead O’Connor, upon which the jokes ensue.  There are no real flaws here other than Colossus looks overly animated at times, and his eyes are a same blankness as Deadpool’s. Practically the same…though Deadpool’s eyes are due to costume choice and Colossus’ are drawn that way. Nitpicking, I know, but it’s distracting and doesn’t make sense to me.  When all the decisions are made at the end of the day why can’t Colossus be slightly different in that department. Unless there is a connection there I'm missing but even that would be too deep. And not make much sense. Eyes are more important than we think. Truly are windows to the soul.  And often we take them for granted in the movies. 

Yes there are many flaws, like I said it's not the most original of a superhero movie. Easy to see that, no doubt especially if you’ve seen every Marvel superhero movie and have read many of the comics.  However, if you are a Ryan Reynolds fan, a comic book fan, an X-Men fan, a superhero movie fan, an action movie fan (which Lauren Shuler Donner (Lethal Weapon’s Richard Donner’s wife) produced this movie, by the way, like her Donner’s Company produced all X-Men films), Marvel comics fan, Stan Lee cameo fan, comedy fan, horror film fan, a fan of any one or combination of the above, you won't have any problems with the flaws.  

The Call: Spend the ten. For the popcorn and big screen. While you still can. Rated R, rated R, rated R.  For strong violence, and language throughout, sexual content and graphic nudity.  Not for children, or the uneducated who don't understand the difference between weapons and violence in movies and the real world.  Running time is 1 hour and 48 minutes.

By Jon Lamoreaux

[focalwriterworks]

THE REVENANT

This could be Leonardo DiCaprio’s year at the 2016 Oscars, though he should have won it for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), and maybe for The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). Either way, The Oscars can be cold to true talent as we all know, and so can this pre-Civil War wilderness revenge film from Oscar winning director Alejandro Inarritu.

The Story: Hugh Glass (DiCaprio) is a hired hand in 1922 mid-west America, along with several other men, for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company led by Captain Andrew Henry (Dohmnall Gleeson). When Glass, who leads the group with his exceptional tracking skills, is attacked by a bear and nearly dies, it takes the entire group to gurney him back to base.  The inclement weather, treacherous terrain and French settlers and their scalp-ripping partners from the Arikara Native American tribe, along with strong dissent from crew member Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), make it exceptionally difficult for Glass who finds he needs to survive and heal himself in order to exact revenge on a deceitful, murderous Fitzgerald.

The Goods: That bear attack, the one Jonah Hill appeared as at this year’s Golden Globes, and the bear everyone who sees this film seems to be discussing, is genius, in the sense it is definitely without a doubt all computer animated.  The scene looks, feels and sounds as real as anything you might suspect could happen when a strange man happens upon a Grizzly’s cubs, which Glass does by accident.  The fur, the voice, the breath of the animal is all created from computers and their artists and the movie magic is sick, as the kids say. Sick.

It’s real, though it’s not real, and the scene which covers the entire attack, is recorded as if it’s all one take, one long recorded shot–as most cell phone videos are one take–captured in nature by Oscar winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and Industrial Light & Magic CGI team comprised of nominees Rich McBride, Matthew Shumway, Jason Smith and Cameron Waldbauer. That’s two more Oscars there, for Cinematography and Visual Effects, and it should be noted this will be a hat trick for Lubezki who won for Gravity in 2013 and Birdman in 2014. An amazing feat in itself.

The other part of The Revenant’s magic is that Inarritu loves these long takes (what seems like long takes as cheated in Birdman, which was seemingly one long shot the entire film). That style of letting the camera capture and not interrupt the action seals the film in this realm of surreal realism, surreal because we are there in the cold, winter, icy mountains or forest or riverside watching the action unfold like a documentary.  The limitation on cuts and edits keeps the film as seemingly pure as possible.

And Lubezki filmed all this without lights, without the normal studio grip, electric and gaffing support the camera department requires. What the camera records then is even more pure and real and that natural lighting is stunning.  I mean, it makes sense to film it this way due to the harsh conditions. But it doesn’t look like crap. The film celluloid, not digital video, sucks it in and renders it all crystal clear with sharp blacks and contrast. There is nothing muddy or grainy about any lack of light the situation may have presented.  Instead, the photography will win an Oscar.

One thing you’ll notice is the eyes of characters, like Fitzgerald and Glass, glow and glisten with the natural reflection of light bouncing off of the snow and frozen tundra. It captures extra intensity in the characters and gives them superhuman traits of sort, the kind of subliminal aura an extra’s zombie eye contacts can do for a horror film. At times it’s as if you can see into their souls, and some, like Fitzgerald, seem soulless. Hardy, too, needs an Oscar for this role.  He exudes country frontiersman, self serving, wild and conniving, where the yellow of cowardice is disguised by the strength of confidence behind knives and guns, and the language of dumb men taught by the dumb, Neanderthal men before them.

Hardy’s Fitzgerald tells a story about his father and how he came to learn reason from his father’s atheistic discovery of God.  The telling is so enriched, and matter of fact, coming on the heals of steely killings that you might think Fitzgerald himself has discovered the secrets of survival. He has actually, but his secrets are gothic, campfire scary, and just as American as the ones learned by Glass.

And let us not forget that we need to include an actor’s interaction with CGI objects and characters today when we consider their performances which, in addition to the extraordinary survival mechanics and real life events DiCaprio endured to make this film, he also leads us to really believe he is mauled by a bear.

The Flaws: My problem with the film however is it’s all too familiar, having grown up seeing and being fascinated by survival and Native American relations in Jeremiah Johnson (1972) and The Mountain Men (1980) amongst other, long man-vs-nature films. I don’t think it’s enough to showcase America in all its natural, wild glory, in terms of exploring and settling the West; the majesty of flowing rivers against pastel winter sunsets and golden reeds against the shoreline, contrasted with the violence of men trampling over men to take what they want, to divide and conquer and to massacre, red blood on white snow, when its been done in countless movies.

What is it that sets The Revenant apart from other films?  Is it only that it’s DiCaprio cutting open a horse in a snow storm and finding warmth inside its dead cavity? Or is it the spectacle of seeing his character attacked by a bear?  Or, like in a Charles Bronson film from the ‘70’s and '80’s, is it revenge in what is ultimately a revenge film? To me none of that warrants “best picture,” and if it weren’t for the director and cinematographer I doubt I would actively seek out and watch this film.  Because it certainly is not entertaining outside of these spectacles–the greatest of which, again, is the fantastic capturing of sun, light and nature in America’s wintery heartland. And ultimately, what really saddens me about all of this, is the undoing of all that hard work by these talented people in the single handed choice to end the film in the way Inarritu does.

The last shot, which I can only equate to the Native American crying on the side of the road in that famous anti-pollution ad from the '70’s, destroys this nearly three hour film in a matter of seconds.

The Call: I say the big screen has the advantage here and you owe it to the crew, and yourself, to see The Revenant on the biggest screen you can.  But other than for photography, I’d say stow the dough. Stay inside, keep yourself warm.

Rated R for strong frontier combat and violence including gory images, a sexual assault, language and brief nudity.   Running time is 2 hour and 36 minutes.

By Jon Lamoreaux

[focalwriterworks]

STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS

Star Wars, the science-fiction space opus created by George Lucas in 1977, returns nearly forty years later with a new episode, the seventh in the series, directed by Mission Impossible III (2006) and Star Trek (2009) director J.J. Abrams. Original cast members Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill make their return to the screen as Han Solo, Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker in what is the biggest theatrical movie event in decades.  

The Story: Let’s just say The Force Awakens is about two young adults, Rey (Daisy Ridley), a young woman scavenging used parts on a desert planet, and Finn (John Boyega), a young man trying to find a better course for his life in light of how unusual he’s been raised. Both find themselves caught in a never ending battle of good versus evil—a galactic war that has been waged for generations between what is considered the light and dark sides of The Force, a powerful inner-spiritual energy possessed by a group of relatively few gifted individuals.  

The Goods: Like any war story you have rookies, and you have seasoned veterans.  They fight side by side and learn from one another.  The younger ones may discover insights the elders overlooked, and the vets distill their wisdom about how things were.  They teach each other something the other may not have thought about or maybe overlooked but now gleam with fresh eyes.  Such is the case for the characters of the original Star Wars universe—which includes robots, or droids as they’re affectionately called here, and varieties of creatures that you would suspect the universe is full of, like Han Solo’s co-pilot Chewbacca, the tall, bear-like creature from a species known as Wookie.  Some may refer to him as a lovable “fuzzball,” faithful partner to Solo aboard the spacecraft known as The Millennium Falcon.  Pairing up young, fresh talent with the likes of these earlier movie heroes—stars of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s—is how Disney wins this reboot.  Technically it’s not a reboot like a remake is a reboot but it is a push start to the manual transmission that puts this franchise in drive.  Hyperdrive as it might be referred to in Star Wars lingo. 

And with every Star Wars movie there are infinitely more aliens, droids and creatures we’re introduced to who fight for good or evil, or live somewhere between.  Episode seven is no different and in fact a BB unit, as it’s referred to, essentially a ball shaped droid with a half-moon, upside down bowl of a head who rolls along and emanates beeps and boops that are anthropomorphically human, in affection and emotion, who can only be described as the most adorable droid you’ve ever seen, befriends Rey—with her very own Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy theme—on the planet she resides on, Jakku, following her like a puppy dog.  BB-8 is the droid’s name, and he essentially steals the show. 

But not when Boyega’s overzealously positive and excited Finn is around.  Finn is a newborn man, one could say, trapped in a profession and way of life that he’s only ever known until he sees that what he’s being forced to do is wrong and finds an opportunity to escape when one comes along.  His evergreen, quest for freedom, and a volcanic system of emotional impulses is ultimately the breathless, emotion-laden child-set-free substance that stokes these Star Wars franchise embers to a flame.  It’s precisely what Disney wanted when they bought George Lucas’ company, Lucasfilm, for $4 billion.  

There are familiar symbols and shells of characters from past films here, a sameness that is comforting to Star Wars fans, while at the same time Abrams attacks each of what might be considered icons of the Star Wars world—lightsabers, blasters, Tie Fighters and X-Wing Fighters—with a certain twist, a renewed charge of color, a revised sound effect here and there, a location or setting and a maneuver of space ships through said territory like never before, and a new take on how to show and express the true power of The Force.  Everything is modified just enough to be slightly over the top which is where our memories have placed these events since when we first saw them.  To say we’re going to make a new Star Wars film and deliver exactly the same lightsaber lights and sounds and design is like revisiting the house you grew up in as a kid, walking the halls showing your own kids now where you used to live and visiting your old room you tell them, “wow, it’s a lot smaller than I remember.”  Abrams and long-time Steven Spielberg producer Kathleen Kennedy—now head of Lucasfilm—tweak our old houses just enough that we can say yes, this is what I remember and then some. 

Lightsaber duels, which Lucas borrowed from Samurai films, particularly Seven Samurai (1957), are inevitable in a Star Wars film.  This one is no different.  The villain, played here by Adam Driver, dressed in black and wearing a helmet and mask similar to the villain Darth Vader from the previous films, goes by the name of Kylo Ren and he carries a sparking red lightsaber with a cross guard.  The cross guard, like the ones on swords of knights from medieval times, and like King Arthur’s famed Excalibur which only Arthur can pull from stone, is exactly the kind of newness episode seven gives us.   

But I’m speaking of things we’re all privy to from Disney’s massive ad and marketing campaign.  What I’m saying is redundant since we’ve all seen the ramp-ups.  Especially for fans of the sci-fi series who have slurped up every morsel of anything Star Wars related since whiff of this movie first caught air.  If you haven’t seen a trailer or heard anyone reference Star Wars The Force Awakens then surely you’ve been in a coma or off the grid.  What it is, what The Force Awakens is—and social media has helped, certainly—is the biggest pop culture event in decades.  And because of the traffic on social media, and in print, radio, cable and network television, it’s burrowed into our psyche like nothing I’ve ever seen.  It’s also the biggest movie event this century, if not ever…though I’m certain Gone With The Wind generated some huge excitement before and after it hit theaters in 1939.   

Sure there were lines around theaters for Star Wars in ‘77, then The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 but by Return of the Jedi in 1983 the seven to twelve year-olds who loved Star Wars were now driving and dating and not as fascinated with it all as they were as children.  Things settled down until 1999 when George Lucas introduced prequels to the original films and as soon as that idea hit him years earlier he went back and labeled all earlier Star Wars films as episodes.  Star Wars ’77 became Star Wars Episode IV – A New Hope.  Lucas will say this is what he always intended.  But I think the idea of prequels, as sequels, for him probably shaped this intention into fact.  Numbering the films gives them continuity too.  It also enables one to keep going infinitely like endless episodes of programming we binge-watch on Netflix.  It got out of hand too in 1997 when Lucas released all films with new digitally animated scenes and added characters that were not originally in the theatrical releases.  He even went so far as to change important plot points that made characters the legends they are today, i.e. an incident with a bounty hunter named Greedo that generated the slogan Han Shot First.  

I bring up all of this because with every new Star Wars film there is an increase in the myths, the legends, the lineage of this whole wonderful world of sci-fi entertainment that is also suffused into our culture.  Most of which is perpetuated in telling by the “elders” who first witnessed this movie phenomenon in the ‘70’s, like the Metropolis (1927) inspired gold-plated droid C3-PO does in Return of the Jedi.  An experience with a Star Wars movie is a campfire story told to the next generation and the one after that.  Seeing any new version or episode—no matter how bad a rap it may get (re: The Prequels)—it’s a chance at reliving the childhood days of seeing never before witnessed spectacles on the silver screen.  Numerous theories and hypothesizing emerged in 2015 about what The Force Awakens would be.  It’s what you want it to be, and Abrams and long time Star Wars screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan kept Episode VII simple enough to be just that.  

The Flaws:  Simplicity is important here and it is certainly not a fault.  The straight forward story and plot here is not a flaw by any means…it’s an asset to the story, to the characters, to the journey new Star Wars characters embark on.  But it goes without saying that when you try to make a movie appealing to the widest audience possible it can meander into redundancy, in comparison to the plot points of the Star Wars films that came before it, that the familiarity and “ghosting” of a so called new episode for a new generation, and for a corporation that answers to shareholders, can collapse if it’s not built on solid ground. So Disney hired a solid director in J.J. Abrams who is at the very least an extremely good employee making a movie for his employer.  There’s no one who could have done a better job—especially with Abrams’ history with successful television, Felicity (1999), Alias (2001) and Lost (2004)—in reigniting this series, particularly if it calls for giving us something safe.  And safe, or saved, it is.  But now I look forward to the next episode to see what director Rian Johnson (Brick (2005), Looper (2012)) can do with it, partly because for me the excitement of seeing The Force Awakens is over and I need the euphoria to continue.  A phenomenon in its own right, that we should hoard our memories of exciting events and seek out ways to relive them.  Like I’ve said before, Disney has discovered the Star Wars algorithm that makes it all work and thus a Star Wars film every year for the rest of our lives. 

One obstacle in that path to safety, or playing it safe, however, could be the work of successful franchises that have surpassed expectations in the twenty-first century, ones based on books which Star Wars is not.  A film series like the Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Hunger Games adaptations, into multi-billion, global ticket sales might do more harm than help to The Force Awakens and the path of any new Star Wars film from here out in the sense that outside of what is familiar to Star Wars fans is the remains of what is familiar to these other movies…most notably Harry Potter.  I think Disney wanted a Harry Potter franchise and they bought one for $4 billion. Hints of this may exist in crucial scenes within The Force Awakens, regarding Rey who with her British accent might just as easily be a Muggle just as she is “scavenger scum.” 

It’s not Abrams’ fault.  In fact most of the earlier Star Wars films with effects created by Industrial Light and Magic, inspired directors like Lord of the Rings’ Peter Jackson and the creation of his Weta Digital.  To say Star Wars inspired these films is the same as saying Flash Gordon, World War II and Korean War films, and Samurai films inspired George Lucas. It’s all cyclical, related and organic if you think about it.  Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings films didn’t exist when the original three Star Wars were released.  But they exist now, and if I’m smelling Muggles instead of Padawans in The Force Awakens well it just may be me. 

There’s something else.  A slight, faint, hint of young girls both strong and adventurous from Disney films Candleshoe (1977), The Parent Trap (1961) and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) or any Disney movie from the ‘70’s that had a score play non-stop over scenes of relatively no dialogue.   Run, Cougar, Run (1972) is a prime example.  But we also see it in non-Disney movies, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), and Grease (1978), something about the female protagonist’s quest for change and the musical interludes before that change occurs…Moonriver, “two drifters, off to see the world, there’s such a lot of world to see; we’re after the same rainbow’s end.”  Or Sandra Dee’s reprise from Grease.  I don’t know…is it too sweet for me?  Too syrupy?  I’m certainly not the demographic for that kind of thing.  

The Call: Regardless, there’s not much here to keep you away.  Spend the ten.  Good or bad, however you perceive The Force Awakens, especially after the hype has overloaded you with the highest expectations, be proud of the fact you’ve been part of a huge pop culture phenomenon.  And are witnessing one of the biggest events in film history. A movie event like this doesn’t come around too often any more.  If you’ve not seen the film by the time you read this lower your expectations and you’ll enjoy it that much more.   It is just a move after all.  But as it is a film born of its fans you owe it to yourself to see it with a crowd. 

Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action violence.  Running time is 2 hours and 15 minutes.  

By Jon Lamoreaux

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SPECTRE

The 24th Bond film, and the fourth for Daniel Craig, introduces the British spy to the franchise’s oldest and most familiar villain.  

The Story: James Bond has a new boss—M, played by Ralph Fiennes—and the whole double-o program is on the verge of being replaced by a mega-surveillance platform.  As M says to his MI5 counterpart, C, played by Andrew Scott, “You’re George Orwell’s worst nightmare.”  Indeed Big Brother watches all but somehow Bond manages to go rogue and follow up on a mysterious tip from the past that leads him to SPECTRE—a group of global pimps, thieves and wise guys, hence the acronym, Special Executive for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. SPECTRE is led by what will eventually become (if we’re still thinking of the Daniel Craig Bond films as prequels) Bond’s biggest nemesis, one Ernst Stavo Blofeld, played here by Oscar winner Christoph Waltz. This marks Blofeld’s seventh Bond appearance, making this 007 episode a sort of origins story for the bad guy.

The Goods: Let me throw one more set of numbers out there: this is the second Bond film for Sam Mendes who has directed two of my favorite films, American Beauty (1999) and Road to Perdition (2002). Like he did with Skyfall (2012), Mendes sticks with dark shadows and film noir elements that keep the spy genre intact…more so than any Bond film prior.  A use of tight quarters—as seen in the tunnels, narrow hallways and secret passages in Skyfall—mirrored Bond’s psychology, of a green agent once full of piss and malt vinegar and his new assassin world falling in around him. That space expands in SPECTRE as a more comfortable and confident Bond appears in wide open spaces more footloose and fancy.  

It’s also a Bond I think we all wanted to see when Casino Royale (2006) was released.  One where Q comes in all serious trying to show Bond the latest spy gadgets and Bond refuses to listen setting off guns and bombs by accident much to Q’s chastising.  The Q here as in Skyfall is once again played by Ben Whishaw, originally played by Desmond Llewelyn, then John Cleese, both older, wiser, dryer, funnier seasoned professionals than Whishaw though Whishaw’s youth shakes things up.  It’s a Bond tradition, that reprieve from the action to see some neat stuff and get a laugh or two before traveling on to distant, exotic locations to use our new found tools of the trade.  But the Broccoli family—Albert Broccoli and then later his daughter Barbara—who adapted and produced nearly all of the Ian Fleming Bond books, and non-Fleming stories, seemed to have liked the idea of keeping Craig’s Bond more grounded, more real; a man who uses his brains and fists before using toys.  And thus the traditions went away…at least the gadget ones did.  

Craig’s Bond has stayed consistent through all of the films making his dramatic, smoldering, psychologically affected inner conflicted self something of an anomaly for the character.  And it’s something fans grew to like.  It’s what has set Craig apart from Connery, Moore and Brosnan.  Mendes who draws out the best “off broadway” moments in characters came in at the right time on Skyfall to define Craig’s Bond as one of the greatest of all time.  Craig helps in that matter delivering the best acting of any Bond actor and I use every weird, fight, dying, torture scene of Casino Royale as proof.  And it’s Mendes’ use of cinema—not high-key comedic lighting and neat spy games—that brought respect back to the character.  

The Flaws: So while Craig is still Bond why not give us a little of what we’ve traditionally liked about the James Bond movies, like I mentioned above.  Tradition.  Let’s see how the “new” Bond does with these familiar situations.  Can he fight a metal-toothed heavy nicknamed “Jaws” like Roger Moore did in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)?  On a moving train no less.  Or can he resist a blade infused top hat like that worn by Oddjob in Goldfinger (1964)?  Follow Goldfinger’s ’37 Rolls Royce Phantom like a spy, in his ’63 Aston Martin DB5 with the ejector seat, machine guns in the headlights, bullet proof wall in the trunk and oil spewing tail lights and then use it to escape?  Somehow all of that—and the cool watches—come to mind here even if it’s not in this movie (even the subtle nod to Jaws the shark movie when beer kegs take the place of buoys in a key SPECTRE fight scene can say to the audience, “Look, it’s Jaws!”).  It’s a bold move by Mendes and writers John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Jez Butterworth all of whom have written previous Bond scripts except Butterworth, to dip into the doodad and reference world, i.e. fandom, of older Bond films when there really hasn’t been any of that in all of Craig’s films.

And the first hour of SPECTRE works great.  It all goes off extremely well and I’m thinking I’m seeing the best Bond film yet.  Overconfident and comfortable Bond knows how good he is and after a few action-packed and stunt crazy scenarios he waltzes in (no pun intended) to overwhelming circumstances he’s not quite ready for.  There’s a quick escape, and a car chase—with the kind of cars you’d expect, beside the latest Aston Martin a Jaguar C-X75…real cars we’ve never seen before.  And it’s all masterfully done, all of it, even the overly familiar parts, until we meet Blofeld.  

The idea generally is you ratchet up the conflicts and escapes and massage the audience with that ebb and flow of plot but here it fails.  I blame the writing for one because the writers are delivering an origins story for Blofeld but they never quite find that arc, or the sympathy with the audience, or even an inkling of care for the villain that would pull us in, make us believe.

Instead, venturing into the familiar territory of past Bond gadgets and superhero feats we get moments of implausibility and failure to suspend disbelief.  That’s only in the second half of the film mind you.  What we get is a sort of anticlimactic race to a finish replete with ticking clock scenarios not unlike Bond diffusing bombs in any number of films, including Goldfinger specifically. To make matters worse, Waltz as a bad guy did better in The Green Hornet (2011).  Remember, I’m just talking about the second half of the movie where it looks like they ran out of time and money.  Waltz in the first half, in shadows, as a mysterious leader of SPECTRE, is superb.  Breathtaking.

I often look to find solutions in a film that develops a sinkhole mid way.  That’s the first sign that it has failed.  I always say too that in situations like this that my post will be the shortest I’ve written.  Never is the case.  And the reason why is I go into all these counter stories, or alternatives that in my head somehow right the film.  They say to learn to write a good script you should study bad ones.  True.  In this situation there’s a lovely opportunity to take James Bond, one we’ve not quite known before, with Craig as this latest Bond that he is, in the sort of origins path we’ve been led down, to shake things up a little in terms of story.  Like if all the change, including physical change, revolved around setting up shop, learning to do reports for someone who is usually in the field, to creating this through-line theme of change to upend the whole Bond story and take our characters into new territories; to juxtapose the office life of a double-o spy due to changing times to one where the hero escapes at night to track down mysteries, while that sounds like The Incredibles (2004), it can be the spark of something magnificently different.  Sure, give us the Bond we expect but break up that expectation a little, make us work for it.  Treat the double-o program like a corporation that has all the mechanisms of today’s work place, having to deal with budgets and politics, staff meetings and one-on-one management meetings with the new boss, M, and his new position; paper pushing, word processors, fax machines, adding paper to the copier, mover guys putting in cubes, tearing down walls…for Bond to say, “I need to get out of here.”  

The bad guy then, you see, is the one who saves the day in that scenario.  Not destroys the film.

The Call: Stow the dough.  It’s a tough call only because the first hour is rock solid.  But by dipping into familiar territory (see secluded Alpine hideout on top of a snow covered mountain, a’ la On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), or even For Your Eyes Only (1981)) SPECTRE becomes less of a nostalgic film, certainly not a reboot, but more like a game of “can you guess the James Bond film being referenced.”  A slippery slope they should have never started down.  Instead, give us something completely different, fish out of water, and throw Bond and his gadgets into that unfamiliar territory—say Wall Street.  What would that be like?  Ninety-nine percent better.

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence, some disturbing images, sensuality and language.  Running time is 2 hours and 28 minutes.  Don’t get me started on Lea Seydoux.  Eva Green as Vesper Lynd from Casino Royale and Carol Bouquet as Melina Havelock from For Your Eyes Only ruined the spot of Bond girl for all others, because they were so good, but especially for Lea Seydoux whose character here has all the personality of a turtle.

By Jon Lamoreaux