The 355

 

This is exactly the kind of film that opens in January. There is a premise that is easy to grasp, there is plenty of action to try to keep you interested, and the characters are bland enough that you can be okay if they make it or they don't. This is as disposable an action film as you are likely to come across this year. Liam Neeson and Jason Statham have this territory to themselves usually, but there is a reason that their movies succeed where this one merely exists, charisma. Jessica Chastain is a fine actress and she has been in some excellent films, but she doers not have the persona here to make the movie memorable.

I love the idea of female spies coming together to form a team of badass women to save the world. The problem is that the characters have very little personality and the plot is action driven rather than character driven. Diane Kruger is the one agent who comes closest to having a personality that is not simply a stereotype. Lupita Nyong'o is mostly defined by her costume and the technical skills she has, rather than something about her that would draw us in. Penélope Cruz is playing a part that makes no sense from a story perspective and it saddles her with the responsibility of being the obligatory damsel in distress. Bingbing fan is the most conventional character and she only shows up in the last quarter of the film. Sebastian Stan glowers through his sections of the film, and should have been a stronger presence for Chastain to play against.

Basically this is a movie composed of a series of chases, fistfights and gun battles that all go on far too long. Everything is competently done but nothing feels special about any of it. There is more running in high heels than any movie I can think of, ever, and it is noticeable that this handicap does not seem to effect anyone in any way. Chastain has a training sequence where her fighting bon a fides are established, but she seems to just miss an awful lot in some of the early fights, making us wonder if she really is as good as she is supposed to be. The fight she has in a cloakroom for five minutes while the "heist" elements of their plan plays out makes no sense at all, it seems to simply be there so she can show off those skills in an evening dress.

The McGuffin in the story is a piece of technology that slips from one set of hands to another. It is set up as impossible to replicate or alter. The obvious question becomes how is that possible, and no answer really makes sense. The second question is if it is so dangerous, why not destroy it the first chance you get? Again, that would just have shortened the movie. Her is a third question, why not buy it in the auction, like all the bad actors in the world are trying to do? Again, the answer is that we would not have a movie is you did that. Plotting is not deep at all here, every double cross is not really a surprise, every character will be given a moment to shine.

Plenty of spy films have featured effective women characters that are interesting and sometimes the leads in the film. The idea of this movie seems to be to exclude any men from participating in the team work and pander to a specific audience. What ended up happening is that bland characters become even less interesting when surrounded by other bland characters and a lifeless plot. The action scenes are fine but not especially interesting, and the result is a film that I doubt anyone will remember by February. 

It Chapter Two

Two years ago, the trailer for "It" built enough anticipation to make a slightly above average horror film, into a monster hit. That original trailer showed us next to nothing, other than the scene that introduces us to Pennywise the clown, in the gutter, tempting little Georgie. When the rest of the film showed up, it could not live up to that terrifying and suspenseful three minutes. They certainly tried with some clever effects and good performances from the young cast. Fans of the book knew there was more coming and naturally Chapter Two was a forgone conclusion.

The pattern repeats itself here. The first film gives us the promise of something special, and we waited two years for it. What we got was pretty average and not nearly as scary as that original trailer for the first film. The trailers for this movie also gave away too many of the creepy moments that would work better as a surprise.

I will say that the opening of the film works very well. A brutal confrontation with small town bigots actually makes us wish for Pennywise to show up and dispatch these a**holes as soon as possible, but first we are reminded about how evil the clown is, and that his return under any circumstances would not be desirable. After a few chilling images that suggest things have started up again, we get a basic quest film story. First the heroes must gather, most reluctantly. Then each of them has to complete a quest individually, in order to proceed to battle, and then finally they all have to come together and work as a team. If you've seen it once, you've seen it a thousand times.

Probably because the book was so dense, there is some exposition that has to be rushed. It sure seems awkward when one character basically roofies another with psychedelic activated natural juices to get him to share his visions. It was also unclear why, after all the losers have gathered and been subjected to a psychic attack from Pennywise, that they still need to be convinced. The idea that their memories have faded after leaving town is an interesting one but not very well explored. Since the film ends up being the better part of three hours anyway, maybe trim the bloated visual effects at the end, and build and solve this mystery at the beginning. 

The individual quests are reasonably entertaining, but there is an element of repetitiveness to them. After the first jump scare with a truly disturbing visual effect, the subsequent experience are a series of diminishing returns that rob the story of any drive and frequently take us down a path of confusion that is never really developed or needed. Jessica Chastain as the grown version ofthe lone girl in the first film is fine.  Bev's trip down memory lane was the standout in this set of moments, but it was also the one that was featured in the original teaser trailer so that the only surprize is the last minute creature effect that gives us a jump scare. Maybe I'm a little jaded having watched two other horror films the day before, but I had none of the anticipation of dread that filled the first film.

There is a running joke about how Bill played by James McAvoy, as a grown man who is now an author of thrillers, is not very good at creating endings for his story. We get that joke at least three times, including a delivery of the punchline by the actual author of this story. I suppose the point of this was to prepare us for the let down of an ending we get here. The best moments of emotional satisfaction in the relationships between the characters, get drowned out by an overblown CGI sequence which features the cast chanting a message that feels pretty hollow. It also goes on, and on. Some many things that had to be condensed, were reduced to give us more of this, the least interesting and frightening part of the film. The coda has some nice moments, Bill Hader steals most of the movie and there is a clever bookend that ties in to the introduction, but the voice over material is overwrought and goes on far too long as well.

"It Chapter Two" is a disappointment from a horror perspective but it is visually inventive and there are a few jump scares that will probably satisfy fans. I really wanted to like it better. Unfortunately, that was true of the original film as well. The adult casting of the kids from the original is solid. Those kids are also back in a series of flashback points that elaborate on the end of the first film and fill in some narrative spots for this story.   

Interstellar

For seven weeks now I have avoided reading any reviews of this film because I wanted to experience it with a clear and open mind. This would usually have been a film that would have been an opening night must for me, but circumstances have put it off for a substantial period. I can now add my two cents to the discussion, although at this point most of you will have formed your own opinions. "Interstellar" is maybe the most ambitious, intelligent and creative science fiction films made in the last fifty years. It has no fantasy elements to it, and it is deeply seated in the hard science realm of quantum physics, but it is more than anything a story about human beings rather than technology.

The Nolan brothers have a pretty clear opinion on how our science dollars are spent. The idea that short term objectives should take precedence over long term goals is an anathema to them. An early scene at young Murphy Cooper's school tells us exactly what foolishness comes from being narrow focused. It also shows how dangerous the conspiracy theories that thrive on the internet are. There is also a healthy bit of skepticism concerning federalization of the education process. Almost none of this is important to the plot but it is essential to the sensibilities of the film maker. This is a "can do" civilization and we need to keep that belief in something greater alive.

A seemingly terminal malaise has settled over the Earth as blight is decimating agriculture and the population of the planet has been diminished by a variety of  circumstances. Matthew McConaughey is Cooper, an engineer and former NASA pilot who has been relegated to the role of farmer, as has most of the world in trying to cope with massive famine. He and his ten year old daughter Murph, discover an anomaly with gravity that leads them to a secret plan to save civilization in one form or another. The team is lead by another father/daughter combination physicist Professor Brand, Nolan regular Michael Caine, and his daughter played by Anne Hathaway. They need Cooper to lead an expedition to a different star system that is being explored for habitable planets. Of the dozen scout ships sent forth only three appear to have survived and found somewhere promising. Because travel through a worm hole in space allows them to reach those destinations in relatively short times on a human scale, the passage of time on Earth will be longer and Cooper's family will grow old before he will ever make it back. This is the point where most of us who have only a passing knowledge of science need to have some exposition. The pacing of the first act is leisurely with a building sense of dread. Once the mission starts, there are some pauses in the action to bring everyone up to speed on the physics. This becomes a time travel story in the sense that different groups will be experiencing time in different ways during the course of the story. I'm sure there are experts out there who will nit pick the science here the way that was done for "Gravity" last year.  As a viewer of the film, I felt sufficiently informed to be able to follow the ideas up through the climax of the film. Once we arrive at the final explanation, I did feel a little lost, even though I could follow the story line. The pace of the movie picks up and with that urgency, the exposition becomes more visual in nature and as a consequence more abstract.

We are told early on that love is the only thing other than time and gravity that transcends space. The purpose of this movie is to show that this is true. Cooper undertakes this mission reluctantly because he sees it is the only possibility of saving his family. Saving humanity matters of course but it is the survival instinct and the love of one's children that drive us to reach a little further. It is a theory that is expounded upon by a late arriving character in the story. It is also told under harrowing and unpleasant circumstances, but it is nevertheless true as Cooper will reveal. The complexity of love and the ability of that emotions to drive our actions is front and center in the story and it usually makes sense. There are some places where the story telling depends on withholding love and then letting love solve a puzzle that don't always work but they still seem to be honest ideas.

In many ways this film is a counter weight to "2001: A Space Odyssey". Kubrick's view of space travel and human evolution is cold and calculating. In that story we seek knowledge because of our intellect, here we are doing the same thing out of desperation. In "2001" it is the machine that betrays us, in "Interstellar" the betrayals are human in nature. The Discovery travels through space without contact on another planet, The Endurance travels through time and space, encountering planets and other explorers in attempting to seed another galaxy. "Space Odyssey" begins at the dawn of man, "Interstellar" begins at what appears to be man's sunset. The psychedelic trip though time in 1968 was a metaphysical journey without any clear explanations, a similar event in the current film is all explanation (although admittedly not well understood). Human evolution in the Arthur C. Clarke story is a result of extraterrestrial intelligence intervening to make it possible, the Nolan brothers have the audacity to believe that human beings might be the ones who are responsible for our own advances. Both stories feature artificial intelligence in the form of on board computer systems, but "Interstellar" makes those characters, mobile and warm. The idea of sacrificing a computer is objectionable to Brand when faced with the need, because of the personification of TARS. Dave and Frank pay lip service (get it?) to HAL being a member of the team, but TARS and CASE participate in the actions and behave as team members, even to the point of making a "2001" joke.

Christopher Nolan is nothing if not ambitious. This is a story with creativity grounded in science. A fantasy writer can invent any kind of planet and populate it with whatever creatures they choose. "Avatar" is a good example. James Cameron makes dragons and tigers and bears of a different sort. Nolan has to conceptualize two worlds  for the explorers to visit that need to seem realistic and dangerous. Neither of the two planets is very hospitable to humans but not because the indigenous life forms are going to eat us. The ecosystems of the two worlds just are not going to work for human habitation. The water laden planet that absorbs so much of the time for our team is actually spectacular to look at and to contemplate. The frozen world that hides a secret is equally well conceived and  even more believable. Neither one will take us out of the science based story that we are in, they reflect the realities of our choices much more.

The human dangers are the one place where there might be some questions about the story telling. There are two different acts of humans that are questionable from a moral standpoint. I don't want to give away anything that could be a reason for suspense or emotional surprise to the audience but I will say that both of these choices seemed questionable to me. in a longer film, the ideas might be the basis for discussion and the central focus or theme of the picture, in this context they feel a little too much like plot bridges to create drama. They work, but they may do so at the expense of the heart of the real story here.

Cooper frequently jokes with the mechanical members of the crew over their honesty and humor settings. He turns them up or down as necessity dictates. Using a similar measurement, this film is near a ninety-five percent on the creativity and thoughtfulness scale and only slightly lower, say ninety percent on a story telling standard. The actors are all excellent and the cast is really filled with people who know what they are doing. A couple of the performers play against type and do well. Hathaway and McConaughey are the show and I thought they were both effective at conveying the characters, especially at moments of emotional depth. Jessica Chastain is usually excellent, here she was merely satisfactory, having been cast in the most thankless role in the film. Young Mackenzie Foy is the brightest spark in the movie although her character's truculence is a bit off putting, you can easily believe her intelligence. "Interstellar" was a wonderful experience and a great intellectual challenge that is carried off with authority.