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Foe (2023)
Good actors wasted in an amateurish, empty SF script
The opening screen tells us that earth's resources are depleted, people are being sent off to live in space, their labour on earth replaced by "human substitutes."
Cut to a young couple, dilapidated house in the middle of nowhere. Stranger in a business suit shows up in the dead of night to inform them they've been picked to be space settlers. Couple acts strangely, don't seem to know anything about their own world or government, barely seem to understand each other. Everything about the situation seems wrong or unbelievable. The rest of the film is about slowly revealing what is really going on.
There are cliches in science fiction that make anyone familiar with the genre roll their eyes. If you know SF, you can probably guess from the first scene where this story is going. Only an amateur writer would try to build a film around such a cliche without anything else to offer. Sadly, the script has nothing else to offer beyond the slow reveal. Not interesting or fleshed-out characters, not an engaging world, not curious subplots. It's a 35 minute idea stretched out into nearly 2 hours. Any random episode of Black Mirror will give you everything this film wants to be, but brilliantly and in a fraction of the time.
When British (or in this case Irish) actors take on American accents they lose depth and nuance in their voices. They sound a little more colourless and generic than in their natural voices. You barely see anything of the world in "Foes," there's no reason for the characters to have American accents. Saorise Ronan's accent constantly slips in any case. In a streaming world where entertainment has become so internationalised, do producers still cling to the sad, old idea that Americans can't deal with voices that don't sound like themselves?
True Detective (2014)
Season 4: A dull exercise in branding
Nic Pizzolatto, creator and writer of the magnificent first season of True Detective, had nothing to do with Season 4. At this point, the series has become a sad exercise in branding.
Season 4 is set in small-town Alaska with a cast of sad-sack characters leading lives of quiet desperation under the long Arctic night when a horrific, possibly supernatural mass murder takes place. In the hands of a talented writer, that's a terrific set-up. Unfortunately the writing is dull and unimaginative. The characters are two dimensional, unlikeable, their personal problems uninteresting, stumbling from one cliche to the next. Four episodes into Season 4, the story seems barely interested in the crime as much as these dull characters. It even seems barely interested in the Arctic setting which so lends itself to horror (see Fortitude or The Head for how to do this well). The portrayal of native Alaskans, another potentially interesting part of the setting, is trite and one-dimensional (dignified spiritual warriors who know so much the clueless white folk don't...).
Is it right to dismiss a series based only on four episodes? It's not the destination, it's the journey. When the journey thus far is so uninspired, the ending is beside the point.
If you loved True Detective Season 1, and kept the hope alive through subsequent disappointing seasons that the original magic might return... Season 4 should be the final clue that it's time to let it go.
Triangle of Sadness (2022)
40 min of hilarious material stretched into 2 1/2 hours of tedium and tepid social commentary
The first 1/3 of Triangle of Sadness is hilarious, a deadpan comedy about two beautiful models who embark on an ocean cruise. Charismatic protagonists, an enigmatic plot, witty social satire. The first 40 minutes of this film deserves the Palm d'Or. And then you realise that there is no more material, no characters, no plot, just a few tediously childish and obvious points of commentary about class, race, and gender relations stretched into 2 hours of seemingly ad-libbed dialogue.
Triangle of Sadness is an awful mess of a film. But the beginning is brilliant and in this age of streaming, you should watch it. And about the time you start to wonder where the wit has gone (replaced by puerile bathroom humour), whether the scenes seem padded, whether it will ever wander back to the initially promised plot (it won't)... About the time that Woody Harrelson makes his wasted appearance... Just hit the stop button and save yourself the disappointment because it will not get better.
The Last of Us (2023)
Walking Dead rehash + annoying teenaged girl
People love the video game and I get that there must be a nostalgic delight in seeing favourite game characters on the big screen done with a modicum of quality.
For the rest of us, this is a competent if mediocre rehash of all of the post-apocalyptic zombie tales and tropes we have seen before in seemingly endless seasons of The Walking Dead and countless other shows and films of the genre. It's a journey through the ruins of civilization beset with zombies and the even greater threat of predatory human beings. Granted, there is the occasional flourish like the honestly touching Episode 3, but in general expect no surprises and you won't be disappointed.
If you want a fresh and novel take on the fall of civilization, seek out Station Eleven.
There's nothing I find more annoying than the sarcastic child character and the teenager Ellie is that taken to 11. It's a shame that this could have been an interesting character - a girl who has grown up entirely after fall of civilization, raised (presumably in seclusion) by the totalitarian government. A totally alien perspective, like a peasant from North Korea suddenly extracted and thrown on the streets of Manhattan. You get none of that from either the writing or Bella Ramsey's portrayal. Ellie acts and talks like a teenager from the present day - worse, like a 40-year old's vision of a teenager, as seen in anachronisms like Ellie casually picking up a cassette tape and popping it in the car stereo - as if she'd know what that was or how to make it work.
Tulsa King (2022)
Entertaining mafia romp if you don't take it too seriously
Mafia soldier, out after 25 years in the big house, is banished to the hinterland (Tulsa, OK) to set up shop for the Family. He puts together an unlikely crew, mixes it up with the local hoods, evades the Feds, all the things you'd expect.
Stallone will never be mistaken for a good actor but he has a certain charm that makes it easy to forget. The story and characters are mostly unbelievable and not terribly imaginative. There are no surprises, nothing you haven't seen a hundred times before. Don't expect realistic depictions of crime, criminals, or law enforcement. Less gritty, more feel good and quirky.
Still, I keep watching. If you don't take it too seriously, it's an entertaining ride.
Men (2022)
Slow-burning horror that turns unrelenting. A stylistic and conceptually work of art.
I like horror and I have a low tolerance for the mediocrity that makes up most of this genre. The problem is that most horror films are filled, between the scattering of scary moments, with such dullness. You have uninteresting characters doing dull things until the horror kicks in and even when it does, the payoff often doesn't seem worth the dull journey to get to that moment.
In "Men", a young woman retires alone to a house in the country after suffering a tragedy. It's a cliche, horror as a manifestation of personal mundane tragedy, and early on I nearly turned the film off because her personal story just wasn't that interesting. But then it clicked that this wasn't a film about a woman's personal tragedy, it aims conceptually at something much bigger. It's a film of universal horror, a horror that a large part of humanity lives with throughout their lives.
The horror starts as a slow burn, a creepiness that gets under your skin...and when you realise what the film is really about, it becomes unrelenting.
Who is this film for? That's hard to say and probably explains its shockingly low rating. The film is graphic, in the realm of visual shock it goes as far as any film I've seen but never feels schlocky (low-budget gore-fests) or purely gratuitous (torture-porn). It's a film that, unlike most films in this genre, isn't just about the scares. It wants to convey an idea. It does it beautifully, almost profoundly. But I think that most of the people who might appreciate the idea will find the visual horror too much to take.
The English (2022)
More Tarantino than period drama, English lady and Pawnee scout in a bloody revenge tale of the Old West
The English begins with an omniscient narrator delivering lines ripped from a breathless Harlequin romance novel. A bad but misleading start. This isn't a romance, at least not that kind of romance. It's not really even a period drama of the the Old West. It has more in common with Tarantino's mythic takes on 19th Century America, think the Hateful Eight or Django Unchained. It's a violent and fanciful rendition of the Western expansion full of settlers, bandits, ranchers, dispossessed native Americans, all in bloody conflict.
Emily Blunt is a displaced English women on a mission to avenge her dead son, a little bit damsel in distress, a bit more damsel with a shotgun. Chaske Spencer takes the Clint Eastwood role of the loner just passing through, as the Pawnee scout who wants nothing more than to leave his army days behind him for a homestead where he can be left in peace (as if that's going to happen). Strong supporting cast all around.
Life After Life (2022)
Nausea inducing shaky camera
For anyone susceptible to nausea and motion sickness from something shot in constant shaky, hand-held camera style, this is the only review you need to read. Stay away.
British tv in particular has had love affair with the Blair Witch Project-style shaky cam, but this is the worst example I've seen in while. There are scenarios where a shaking, bobbing camera in constant motion makes sense: fake documentary shot by amateur running through the woods with a cheap video cam, film footage from a war correspondent dodging bullets on Omaha Beach. In a somber Downton Abbey style period drama? Really? I can only guess that there's a school of film making that thinks making a viewpoint less realistic (human eyes and mind don't work that way, they work to reduce rather than increase instability) somehow makes it feel more realistic?
Tokyo Vice (2022)
Gritty, sophisticated tale of struggling American ex-pats and Yakuza intrigue
American films set in Japan rarely rise above using the setting as an exotic backdrop, with a viewpoint (from the perspective of both the characters and the filmmaker) that never penetrates the culture beyond shallow Western cliches of the East. Tokyo Vice is different, but that's only part of what makes it great.
The viewpoint is Japan-centric, most of the dialogue is in Japanese (including by the American actors, who to their credit do a credible job) and this is not the typical story of naive and bumbling Americans in an strange and inexplicable land. Two of the three central characters are Americans who fully embrace Japanese culture and are doing their best to fit in: the young reporter who through perseverance and talent lands a job at a Japanese newspaper on the crime beat, and the ambitious club hostess trying to make a new life while navigating the treacherous waters of the Tokyo underworld. The third character is a Yakuza tough whose sensitive disposition might be at odds with the gangster lifestyle.
This is a crime investigation mystery, immersed in Japanese culture. The story is often far fetched (for example, in how quickly the green reporter makes connections with the police and the criminal underworld), but the characters are compelling and their intertwined stories move along with nervous, colourful energy. The depiction of the Yakuza has Sopranos-like brutality and mundane attention to detail.
The acting is strong, notably the Japanese cast headlined by the magnetic Ken Watanabe (Japan's answer to Cllint Eastwood).
1883 (2021)
Oregon Trail epic meets breathless teen romance
We have endless Westerns about cattle ranchers, gun fighters and desperadoes. There have been precious few about the journey of the wagon trains of immigrants crossing the West along the Oregon trail. It's a fascinating part of history and in many ways this is a decent attempt. The danger and wide open beauty of the wilderness, the constant threat from starvation, weather, geography, the settlers' own incompetence, bandits, and hostile Native Americans are all captured fairly (sometimes over dramatically, but this is a drama after all, and when you read real accounts of these journeys the depiction of the horrors is realistic).
I wondered what MTV is doing producing such a gritty historical drama. It soon becomes clear that the historical drama is only half of the equation. While there are a number of central characters, the focus of the story is the teenage daughter of a hard-bitten Civil War veteran turned settler. Amid this travel drama is the coming-of-age story of this daughter, her transition from girl to womanhood, from dress-wearing "lady" to rough cowgirl...and her romantic life. A large part of the story is basically a breathless teen romance, told with all of the moist, purple prose (yes, there is plenty of direct, first-person "dear diary" exposition from the daughter) of a Harlequin romance novel.
The story itself is full of cliches and stock characters. The acting covers the gamut from surprisingly strong to weak, and the poor quality of many of the "southern" accents is grating. But at the end of the day it's a decent story with sympathetic characters and a fair portrayal of the western journey of the wagon trains. If you can get over (or don't mind) the breathless teen romance, it's worth a look.
The Dropout (2022)
Sharp, witty, entertaining take on one of the most fascinating business scandals of recent times
I've followed the Elizabeth Holmes / Theranos saga for years. It's been the subject of all manner of investigative journalism including excellent books, documentaries and podcasts, notably by the journalist John Carreyrou. It's one of those stories where the truth really is stranger than fiction. Dramatisations of stories like these are almost always disappointing because the scripts are either poorly written, dull or maudlin, or take dramatic liberties that stretch the underlying truth to the breaking point.
The Dropout was a very pleasant surprise on both counts. The writing is sharp, witty, often outright funny. The acting is superb from top to bottom, with supporting cast including the likes of William H. Macy and Stephen Fry and absolutely riveting performances by Amanda Seyfried and Naveen Andrews playing the central characters Elizabeth and Sunny. Together, the script and acting alone make this an entertaining watch whether or not you know much about the Theranos scandal already (if you don't, The Dropout may drive you find out more; the series only skims the surface).
As far as being true to the source: I was initially worried that it might play too much to Elizabeth Holme's self-serving narrative which she spun during her criminal trial. While The Dropout makes some allusions to things that Holmes used to portray herself as a naive and unwitting victim, and while there are places where it clearly takes dramatic liberties, overall it's a very fair depiction of the true events. The one place where I would quibble is the portrayal of Elizabeth Holmes herself. Amanda Seyfried proves she's a great actor, her performance is entrancing and she gets many of Holme's mannerisms down. However, the portrayal plays too much on nervous and unsure with a teaspoon of crazy thrown in. The real Elizabeth Holmes, as you can see in numerous interviews and public appearances over the years, even during most of her trial, comes across as unwaveringly self-confident and charming. These characteristics were the key to her confidence game and the way that she conned so many people, the tech industry, and the media at large for so long. That's the once thing that doesn't accurately come across in The Dropout. Other than that, it's a superb drama.
Prospect (2018)
Lackluster story that makes little use of its SF setting
Most low budget SF films are terrible. Prospect is not terrible and I suppose that's an achievement of sorts. There seems no shortage of acting talent for indie films these days. A veteran like Pedro Pascal delivers as a good a performance as one could expect from his role, and Sophie Thatcher is solid as "the girl" (although she doesn't reach the emotional depths you'd expect from someone forced to endure these events). An indie SF film can succeed if it has a brilliant screenplay or at least a vision that fully justifies and requires it's SF setting (e.g., Moon, Primer, Mad Max). The story in Prospect is a lackluster adventure/survival tale that, divorced from its colourful alien setting, would be forgettable. The dialogue is workmanlike (again, not terrible), the plot progression predictable.
The story feels like a Western set in space. The futuristic setting doesn't elevate the story; in fact, there are many questions about the world and society that could be easily answered but never are. Given the lack of world-building, setting the story in the 1800's American frontier (which it easily could have been) would at least have had the advantage of drawing on a background of solid history. Here, it feels like the writers are just making things up to move the plot along. As far as being "hard" SF, there's nothing in the film that deserves that label other than the acknowledgement that you need a suit to breath in an alien atmosphere. The grungy tech circa 1970's seems more an affectation that realism - you could make things more believable even without CGI.
Foundation (2021)
Not an adaption of the books, not a compelling drama in its own right
There are two paths to take in adapting a book to the screen and both can lead to great stuff. You can stick pretty closely to the source material, allowing for some necessary artistic license (The Expanse) or you can take basic ideas or plot points as a backdrop but tell your own story entirely (Watchmen).
Foundation does the latter and on paper that's probably a good move. It's hard to imagine Asimov's Foundation books make for a good literal translation to the screen. The books are not so much a single story as an outline of an idea about the fall and reemergence of galactic civilisation, told in a series of loosely connected short stories that are mostly vignettes of two-dimensional characters having conversations. The producers have tried to make this a cinematic experience by taking the bare plot points of the books and blowing them into completely original stories with original casts of characters.
The problem is the "stories" aren't really stories but vignettes of characters that don't go anywhere or amount to much. The acting is good, the special effects and costumes lavish, but the writing feels like filler, killing time between outlined plot points from the books. The writing and characters are sometimes intriguing (emperors), more often unimaginative or cliched, and there's no time to develop either characters or plot before the sweep of time replaces the old set with a new set.
In departing so much from the source material, Foundation needs its own vision with the writing to back it up. Unfortunately it has neither.
Y: The Last Man (2021)
Well acted, intelligent post-apocalyptic drama/thriller
Now I get the poor reviews: right-wingers feeling threatened by a (mostly) female cast and a negative portrayal of political extremists. If you are not in that category, you will find a surprisingly good drama/thriller set in a post-apocalyptic US, sympathetically portraying a variety of characters trying to hold it together while their lives and society teeter on the verge of collapse. The depiction of society after the disaster is intelligent and realistic. Hint: it doesn't turn overnight into Mad Max-ian cannibal anarchy.
I read the comic series nearly a decade ago and don't remember much other than that it was excellent. The criticisms that the show doesn't live up to the source material are probably correct, but on its own merits this is an excellent series with great acting (Diane Lane is always a joy to watch, although her portrayal of a Congresswoman thrust into the role of President is too soft around the edges) and an intriguing mystery that drives the plot. Most of the post-apocalyptic shows that followed in the wake of The Walking Dead have been utter garbage. This one is not, and anyone in the mood for a smart take on after-the-fall dystopia won't be disappointed.
Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020)
Song spoofs: Good. Everything else: Bad. Really bad.
To give credit, the musical numbers are spot-on Eurovision spoofs. They capture the Eurovision song genre perfectly. Thing is, Eurovision is already self-consciously ironic, it spoofs itself. Watch the actual Eurovision song contest and you will get more than enough of the same hilarious, over-the-top, eurotrashy goodness.
I like Will Ferrell and I'll always give his movies a chance. But this is C-list material at best. The jokes are tired, rehashed....tired. If anything, Will Farrell and the always charming Rachel McAdams with their fake Icelandic accents make things worse. Casting a pair of young Scandinavian actors in the lead roles might have lightened things up a bit, but of course that would miss the point that this is a Will Ferrell movie.
Get hold of old Eurovision song contests. It would be more entertaining than this. Or better yet, watch it live with a group of friends like we do in Europe.
303 (2018)
Charming, Luminous & Subtle: In Your 20s, On the Road
This is inevitably going to be compared to Before Sunrise, the 1995 Linklater film about a girl and boy who meet on the road and spend the film walking and talking about the inane, self-absorbed, philosophical things that young strangers in their 20s talk about. I loved Before Sunrise, but watching it again after decades I was struck by how heavy-handed and affected, albeit charming, it felt, how much the actors felt like movie stars rather than average people.
"303" feels utterly natural, unaffected. The leads are attractive (of course) but their portrayal of the frailties and warmth of two random strangers who find themselves unexpected travelling companions is believable and sympathetic. This is a film about two people in their 20s talking. The conversations are in turns inane, thoughtful, philosophical, naive, imbued with a sense of self-uniqueness and import that is the nature of being in your 20s. There is drama as well on this journey, but it is low key and ultimately isn't the point. The journey is the point.
Where "303" loses a star or two is that it never really pushes boundaries. It is what it seems to be, no more and no less. That's still pretty great.
Devs (2020)
Promising near-future SF mystery... devolves into an incoherent, metaphysical mess
It's easy to be sucked in to this stylish, near-future mystery involving an enigmatic tech company working on quantum computers. Once you get beyond a few initial surprises, however, you become aware of how painfully slow the pace is, which isn't helped by acting that is so consistently affectless that it must be a direction choice rather than a shortcoming of the actors themselves.
It would be fine if this glacial pace had a pay-off. It doesn't. Without spoiling anything: if you expect a work of science fiction, you'll be sorely disappointed. The plot devolves into meta-physical nonsense, ultimately undermining even that with an anti-climactic ending that rolls out one of the most well-worn and simplistic SF tropes.
Black Summer (2019)
Avoid if you can't stand shaky-cam
Apparently keeping the camera in constant wobble makes this feel like "real life"
The First (2018)
6 hours of..... nothing.
Imagine one of the most exciting, interesting, daring endeavours the human race could undertake... launching a mission to Mars. Now imagine telling a story of that mission launch in the most dull, lifeless, uninteresting, cliche-ridden way possible.
If you're drawn to this for the SF theme, don't bother. There is nothing speculative, imaginative, scientific, or unexpected to be found. It's pure human relationship drama set in the present. Which is fine, except that it's a drama free of any drama or tension, no plot to speak of beyond a string of tired cliches you could summarise on the back of a napkin.
I would say that this is an exercise in taking a camera and following a set of real people go about their lives without any attempt at adding any dramatic colour or tension, but real people couldn't possibly be as dull as these flat, cardboard characters. And a real mission to Mars, no matter how bureaucratic or mundane, couldn't possibly be as dull and predictable as this one.
The Orville (2017)
Embarrassing vanity project
Seth MacFarlane casts himself in the lead role as captain of the Starship Orville in what must have been sold as a Star Trek spoof but quickly reveals itself to be largely devoid of laughs or wit. It clearly wants to be a semi-serious drama underpinned with snickering dialogue and bathroom gags, but both the drama and the attempts at humor are undermined by writing that hovers at the level of Star Trek fan fiction.
Carriers (2009)
Skillfully made, unimaginative
A low-key, skillfully made drama. The acting is good. The writing is competent. There are a few nice moments, but also too many of the usual clichés of the surviving-the-apocalyptic-plague genre. There are no surprises, nothing particularly imaginative. From beginning to end, the plot plays out exactly as you'd expect. This could be counted as a strength in the sense that it is a film about ordinary people reacting in a fairly realistic way to the circumstances. On the other hand, we've seen it all before. Not terrible. Very forgettable.
I disagree that the pacing is slow. It's right for the story. It's just that the story never rises much above low-key and ordinary.