Category Archives: 2017

Icarus

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Icarus                                                                    5 stars

Icarus is the award winning documentary by sports enthusiast and film maker Bryan Fogel about the folly of anti-doping efforts in international sports.  Like some of the best documentaries the film set out to do one thing then ended up going in a very different direction.  In this case Fogel sets as his objective the discrediting of the anti-doping efforts of WADA by enlisting the help of Grigory Rodchenkov, the director of the anti-doping center for Russia.  But what follows is the revealing of the astounding efforts that the Russians have gone through for years to cheat at international sports.  It is Rodchenkov who plays a pivotal role in the story as he leaves his life and family behind in Russia to become a whistleblower on the scale of Russian cheating and so becomes the central figure in Fogel’s film.  The film goes into detail about how the Russians went about their scheme at the Sochi Olympics by swapping out urine samples for hundreds of athletes before they could be tested.  It is remarkable how they were able to get away with this.  Finally, the truth was revealed before the Rio Olympics in 2016 and many Russian athletes were banned from the games.  It is also clear from the movie that Vladimir Putin played a role in this fraud which he has of course always denied.  Anyone who has a keen interest in competitive sports should be sure to see Icarus.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

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Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri             5 stars

I finally got around to seeing Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri a full year and a half after it was released and now that I have I can say that it is the movie that should have won Best Picture for 2017.  The movie stars Francis McDormand as Mildred Hayes who has lost patience with the local law enforcement’s failure to find any suspects in her daughter’s murder, to the point that she puts up a message on three billboard near her home to bring attention to the case.  This move is not appreciated by the local sheriff (Woody Harrelson) and his second in command racist deputy (Sam Rockwell).  All three lead performances are superb in this complex story about loss, anger and reconciliation as the characters rage against one another and eventually come to see one another’s points of view.  Not only is the story interesting, but the filmmaker, Martin McDonagh seems to have gotten the perfect blend of drama and humor.  The most impressive aspect of the movie to me was how each of the actors were able to display the pain and anguish that each was going through.  I only wish I would have seen this gem much earlier when it was getting so much attention.

Downsizing

Downsizing         2 stars

I saw two movies recently that can be classified as social satires, one of which was very well done and the other while having great intensions falls far short.  Downsizing, from 2017 takes place in the near future when a technology is discovered that allows people to be shrunk in size to only a few inches tall.  The promise is that this will save the planet from environmental catastrophe by reducing the human footprint and allow people to live in luxury in a place called Leisure Land because their cost of living is reduced to a tiny fraction of normal.  It stars Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig as the couple willing to embark on this adventure when he becomes disillusioned with his job.  The movie has a few funny moments but loses its satiric edge as it seeks to deliver a message on the inequalities of this new world and the dangers of overconsumption.  By the end of the movie I just wanted to say: Ok I get it. There are always injustices in the world!  The movie was by director Alexander Payne who in the past has given us great movies like “Sideways” and “The Descendants”.  Something did not go well with the idea for Downsizing.

Alien Covenant

Alien: Covenant                 4 stars

Alien: Covenant I believe is the fifth movie in the franchise and sees the return of Ridley Scott as the director. You may recall the original trilogy of the seventies and eighties in which Sigourney Weaver battles killer aliens found on a distant planet. This installment set two decades before the original Alien is just as horrifying and is aided by the modern CGI effects common to science fiction movies today. The movie is set on a colony spaceship with over 2,000 people on a multi years journey to a planet that is to be a new settlement for humans and occurs ten years after the events of Prometheus, another doomed space mission. A constant in the Alien movies is the presence of a synthetic, an artificially created humanoid who serves his human creators. The role of the emotionless but curious synthetic Walter is filled again by the amazing Michael Fassbender. As a result of a mishap on the Covenant in which the captain is killed, the crew learns of a previously unknown nearby planet that can support human life, so the new captain (Billy Crudup) decides to alter the plan and investigate and possible avoid years of hypersleep. Of course, this is the first mistake of many. The planet happens to be the same one of the events of the ill-fated Prometheus! When the landing party including the captain and Walter arrives, other than and intense storm, things seem normal enough. That is, until the pathogen born creatures start to show up and kill off the crew! The synthetic, David (also Michael Fassbender) who was the only survivor of Prometheus finds the crew and explains to them what happened here. Unfortunately, he leaves out a few key details that would explain what happened here. The movie is perhaps less original than Prometheus, and more like the original movies thanks to Scott. It is heavy on the interactions of the characters and an action driven plot. The scenes involving two Michael Fassbender’s are especially intriguing. Also, as expected the movie is heavy on blood and gore, so be forewarned! (This one is far better than last week’s Underwater.)

Rough Night

Rough Night       1 ½ stars

Rough Night is an uneven 2017 comedy about a group of girl friends from college who get together for a wild bachelorette party when one of their group is about to get married. It stars Scarlett Johansson as Jess who is the one getting married to Peter (Paul Downs who I never heard of before) and happens to be running for a state office. It’s an unusual comedy role for Johansson who is often found in drama and action roles (The Avengers). Alice (Jillian Bell) is her funny best friend and roommate from college who sets up the wild weekend in Miami, Florida. Her two other friends are Blair (Zoe Kravitz) and Frankie (Ilana Glazer). Then Pippa from Australia (Kate McKinnon) arrives who is Jess’ friend from Australia. McKinnon provides a lot of comedy to the movie being quite an accomplished improv actor, but the Australian accent is not convincing. The group arrives at a million dollar mansion on the beach (where most of the scenes are) and before long they manage to accidentally kill the male stripper that Frankie has hired for the party. The rest of the movie is made up of the hijinks that ensues as the women struggle to come up with a plan that will keep them out of prison and save Jess from a career ending scandal. Since that isn’t enough to carry the movie, another comedy bit is added involving Paul’s misguided efforts to drive to Miami to save their relationship. (Somehow in one of the most contrived aspects of the movie it becomes necessary for him to travel wearing diapers and no pants!) The movie feels like it has borrowed material from other comedies involving bachelor/bachelorette parties and has little originality. And since it is a bachelorette comedy there is no shortage of sex related scenes and jokes throughout, especially with Jillian Bell’s Alice who seems obsessed with penis jokes. The movie was made mainly by Lucia Aniello who has few credits to her name. I would advise Scarlett Johansson to find better comedy material in the future and that goes for the rest of the cast as well.

Okja

Okja                       3 ½ stars

I went back a few years to see an earlier film by Korean film director Bong Joon Ho. Ho is probably best known for the 2019 Academy Award winning film Parasite, about greed and class discrimination. His earlier movies that I have seen are The Host and Snowpiercer. His imaginative films typically contain elements of science fiction or fantasy with dark undertones, and this is certainly true of Okja, a tale about a genetically engineered super-pig that is loved by a Korean girl named Mija. Mija has been raising Okja from a piglet with her grandfather in the mountains of Korea for ten years and the two are quite close. But Okja is actually a genetically engineered animal intended to be a new food source along with hundreds of other such animals that was created by the conglomerate Mirando Corporation, led by the villainous Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton). One day the face of Mirando arrives at the farm in the form of Dr. Johnny Wilcox (Jake Gyllenhaal), a comically self-absorbed TV show host, who is there to take possession of Okja and take her back to New York where she will participate in a sort of beauty contest for the giant pigs before they are taken to slaughter. This doesn’t sit well with young Mija, so she sets off to free Okja before she is shipped to New York. But along the way she encounters a group of animal rights activists, called the ALF, or Animal Liberation Front, led by Jay (Paul Dano), who has some personal issues with violence. This sets off plenty of action and comical situations that are amusing, all created with some ingenious special effects. The movie is enjoyable to watch, though due to language it probably is not suitable for young children. This was Bong Joon Ho’s second English language movie, his first being the manga inspired Snowpiercer. Since that earlier movie didn’t do well in the foreign markets, he decided to go the streaming route teaming up with Netflix. When it was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, the audience booed the Netflix logo, showing their disapproval of the streaming platform. Though overall, the movie was well received. The movie is somewhat predictable and lighter than Ho’s other movies, especially the award-winning Parasite that came out two years later.

Tesla/ The Current War

Tesla                                    2 stars

The Current War               3 stars

Within one year two movies were released about how the power of electricity was harnessed in America in the 1880’s and 1890’s. Both Tesla, directed by Michael Almereyda and The Current War, directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon cover the events when Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse were competing over the building of the fledgling powergrid that would light up American cities into the twentieth century. Immigrant Nikola Tesla also figures prominently in the stories with his designs of an electric motor that could efficiently utilize alternating current. While covering the same subject the two films are very different in focus and style. Tesla, of course centers on the life of the genius inventor from the Austro-Hungarian Empire with Ethan Hawke in the starring role who plays him as a moody, silent individual often lost in thought. He is more concerned with changing the future of mankind with his inventions than seeking personal gain. (He, of course, eventually loses his fortune and dies penniless.) Edison is portrayed by Kyle MacLachlan who is far too old for the part and Westinghouse is played by Jim Gaffigan to comic effect. The Current War stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the genius Thomas Edison who is fighting for DC current to be used as the basis for powering cities while Michael Shannon portrays brilliant businessman George Westinghouse who is selling the idea of alternating current as a more efficient means of transmitting power. As the title suggests the movie centers on the battle between the two over whose company will build and control the transmission of electric power across the country. Tesla (Nicholas Hoult) is a supporting character in The Current War who first works for Edison, goes on his own and then partners with Westinghouse. In both films it’s curious that the filmmakers chose to have Tesla speak without the hint of an accent which seems unlikely for the European immigrant. Wealthy entrepreneur J. P. Morgan features prominently in both movies (Donnie Keshawarz in Tesla and Matthew MacFadyen in The Current War) as the man who ultimately finances the whole enterprise. The style of the two films is what makes the difference between them. Tesla takes a post-modern artistic approach using the character of Anne Morgan, J. P. Morgan’s daughter, to tell the story as the woman who falls for Tesla while also narrating the background of the film’s people and events, but from our present using Google searches and iPads. There are other anachronisms used in the movie such as a cell phone and electric vacuum cleaner. I presume this is a way of showing the influence Tesla’s genius was to have on future developments, but I found it to be distracting. There are even fictional scenes such as an ice cream fight between Tesla and Edison that Anne fortunately tells us never happened. Another device used is to introduce characters without identifying them until later that I found to be confusing. By contrast The Current War is a biopic about the two men done strictly chronologically that puts the names of the characters on screen as each appears. It’s a less artistic approach but it gets the job done. The criticism I have with The Current War is the fast pace of it and quick editing. You need to pay attention, but it is less confusing than Tesla. Both are less than perfect films, but you will learn a lot from them, such as how the execution of a condemned prisoner was used by Edison to further his argument that Westinghouse’s alternating current was too dangerous to use around people. Tesla premiered at Sundance in 2020 while The Current War premiered at Toronto in 2017 and was then shelved for 2 years until its release in 2019.