Somebody Get An Iron

Year: 2018

Director: Ava DuVernay

Cast: Storm Reid, Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon 

Run Time: 1 hour 49 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

I, like most people who were once children, have definitely read Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, really enjoyed it, and remember almost nothing about it. So you don't have to take my review with a grain of salt. I won't call this film a bastardization of the book. It hasn't ruined my childhood. Because, for all I know, this is the most faithful adaptation ever conceived. I literally don't remember.

I recall there being a character named Charles Wallace, and there's one of those in the movie, so it passes the test.

So, here's the plot of A Wrinkle in Time, which you probably don't remember even if you saw the movie today: young girl Meg (Storm Reid) is still wracked with grief over the disappearance of her scientist father (Chris Pine) four years ago. He disappeared right after adopting her younger brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe). And her mother (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) doesn't do all that much, but you can't just not mention Gugu Mbatha-Raw if she's in a movie.

Charles Wallace introduces Meg to three weird mystical women named Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon), a scatterbrained woman who doesn't appreciate Meg's distrust and closed-off emotions, Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling), who only speaks in literary quotes, and Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey), who seems to be the ringleader and is hilariously 30 feet tall for the first third of the movie. Who these women are married to, I'll never know. Anyway, they know how to bend time and space to travel thousands of light years in a split second, and in order to rescue their dad, who is being held captive by an evil force spreading darkness throughout the universe, the kids must team up with the women and their random useless neighbor Calvin (Levi Miller) to go on a cross-universe adventure.

At the very least, I'm glad this movie finally allowed Oprah to show us her true form.

A Wrinkle in Time is whimsical as f**k, and that's actually one of its rawest strengths. Director Ava DuVernay (whose previous works are well-respected but certainly in no way implied that this is the type of movie she had the capacity to make) definitely has a vision and is pursuing it full-bore. The costuming is like watching a full season of RuPaul's Drag Race condensed into 100 minutes, blasting a glitter cannon into your face every six minutes or so. There is no moderation in the design elements of Wrinkle in Time whatsoever, and between the fact that Oprah's bejeweled eyebrows change between every scene, the glorious, intricate hairpieces they slam onto Mindy Kalings scalp, and the rumpled pillowcase Reese Witherspoon seems to be dressed in, it's a sumptuous visual feast that pulses with energy.

Kids will certainly relate to this film, because that energy is exactly as empty and ephemeral as the sugar rush they'll be getting from their fistfuls of Skittles they got at the concession stand. A Wrinkle in Time jams you through its plot with a total lack of focus and broad, brittle dialogue meant to force you down the narrative track like bumpers on a bowling lane. Even though the world they inhabit is a free-flowing mass of sparkly fabrics, the characters and their arcs are stilted and strange, and the script frequently dips into being actively unbearable (the theme of the film is presented via a cootie catcher, for one thing, but this high-fantasy movie also relies on a radio news report for important exposition, which is the laziest way to do just about anything).

The plotting is equally messy, which to be fair is probably due to the highly metaphysical, internal nature of the original book, but still. The third act just turns into a video game where every rule we've seen established is instantly broken and most of the conflicts are converted into music videos for one of the many atrocious pop songs that are sticking out of the movie like razor blades in the face of a Hellraiser Cenobite.

Mindy's face when she read the script for the first time.

Luckily, the movie doesn't really rely on its script to carry things. Unluckily, it mostly just relies on kids going "whoooooooaaaaa," at a big heap of CGI nonsense flying around. For as much personality as the Misses bring to the film, the worlds they visit are too-similar, slickly designed landscapes so smooth and digital that your eye slides right off them.

The acting is fine at least. Charles Wallace is strangely wiggly in his physicality when push comes to shove, but let's not hang around insulting children. Kaling and Winfrey are absolutely satisfying, even if they don't push themselves particularly hard, and Witherspoon certainly gets across the airy inhumanity of her character, though her performance slips into manic a little too often for my liking.

Although A Wrinkle in Time is mostly forgettable, it's anything but anonymous. Whatever the movie's faults are, they are entirely its own, and to that point, if you're in the right mood some of those faults can be strengths (funnily enough, that idea is actually a major plot point). I for one was captivated by the completely strange presentation of Meg's school bully, who hangs out of her window at a 45 degree angle to spy on her at home. And the way Levi Miller exits a doorframe, milking it for every ounce of emotional weight it's worth and then some, squeezing out every last drop of screen time he can possibly glean, is a fascinating trainwreck of a scene.

All in all, I didn't hate it, but A Wrinkle in Time is a huge, flabby disappointment. That's the way these things go sometimes.

TL;DR: A Wrinkle in Time is ambitious, but entirely too messy and bland to be satisfying.
Rating: 4/10
Word Count: 987

I'm Only Here For The Commercials

Year: 2018

Director: Julius Onah

Cast: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David Oyelowo, Daniel Brühl 

Run Time: 1 hour 42 minutes

MPAA Rating: TV-MA

I had to be at work during the Super Bowl this past Sunday, which I certainly didn't mind. I didn't have to pretend to care about football beyond a general distaste for anything Tom Brady says or does. I didn't have to will myself into watching the halftime show - normally my favorite part of the broadcast - put on by the human equivalent of a big bowl of vanilla extract. But I also didn't get to see the historically bold move by Netflix, dropping the newest entry in the Cloverfield franchise with a trailer announcing that the movie would be available to stream the instant the game ended.

Now that's a rollout you just can't ignore. And don't let the immediate social media blowback fool you, this project is exactly like Beyoncé's similarly released self-titled album: only OK.

But since when have you ever heard an online hot take expressing how fine something was? It can only be one way or the other.

The Cloverfield Paradox takes place in a not-too-distant future where an energy crisis is causing major strife on good ol' Earth. To help save a world that's teetering on the brink of a major war, a team of international scientists build the Shepard space station, their mission being to experiment with the world's largest particle accelerator to create a sustainable source for clean energy.

Only, they're playing in God's domain (and by God, I mean J. J. Abrams), so there's a high risk factor.  If the crew - including grieving-mother-who-is-basically-Sandra-Bullock-from-Gravity Ava (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), the stern Captain Kiel (David Oyelowo), the Irish maintenance crew member Mundy (Chris O'Dowd), German scientist Schmidt (Daniel Brühl, who has been cropping up in more and more projects since his turn as the milquetoast villain Zemo in Captain America: Civil War), and Chinese engineer Tam (Ziyi Zhang of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Memoirs of a Geisha) - succeeds in their experiments, they might just tear a rift in the space-time continuum and cause a massive dimensional collision, unleashing a variety of monsters and adverse effects on the world in the past, present, and for however long it will take for these movies to stop making money.

I don't wanna spoil the plot here, but c'mon. They do the thing.

The Cloverfield Paradox is probably the worst Cloverfield movie, but what even is a Cloverfield movie anyway? The franchise itself doesn't seem to know. And if they keep just attaching the Cloverfield name to films that were developed without any plans of fitting into an increasingly massive monster series, they won't last long enough to figure it out. But if you have the foresight to detach yourself from any expectation at all that the film will be in any way remotely similar to the original film (hopes which 10 Cloverfield Lane should have dashed long ago), it's still a fun little sci-fi romp that's worth a look, though there's no way it could live up to the hullabaloo surrounding its rollout.

I'm going to say something that probably won't carry a lot of weight, but is exactly how I feel: if you liked the 2017 space horror movie Life, then you might just really dig The Cloverfield Paradox. It's a solid meat and potatoes sci-fi B-picture, with all the flatness of character that that implies. But hey, even Alien didn't bother giving anybody but its protagonist more than one trait.

The movie doles out a lot of bizarre plot developments that frequently seem contradictory or lack a proper explanation, but each individual moment is uncanny and watchable, keeping up a propulsive pace that sucks you in like the vacuum of space. Sure, The Cloverfield Paradox is a lot of goopy sci-fi nonsense, but since when is that a bad thing? The twists and turns that launch the plot into more and more deranged heights are fascinating and intense, promising another moment of gasp-inducing drama or solid body horror around each corner.

I bet Black Mirror is looking pretty safe and cozy right about now, huh?

And that cast! The players assembled here are vastly overqualified, and although not too many of their talents are taxed in any real way, Gugu Mbatha-Raw gives an astounding lead performance that grounds even the more forced plot moments in raw, genuine emotion. This woman is a movie star and she deserves all the success that Hollywood has to offer in this supremely weird time for motion pictures.

The only other actor who really makes a major impression is Chris O'Dowd, but unfortunately that's because he delivers some of the most odious comic relief this side of Jupiter Ascending. It's a testament to his skills as a comic that he can make some of his jokes land, but he sticks from the side of this movie like a rusty nail, ready to catch on your clothes when you least expect it.

OK, fine, maybe The Cloverfield Paradox is no masterpiece. But it delivers some gently futuristic background machines that whir pleasantly, plenty of Spielberg-adjacent flashing lights and special effects to gawk at in awe, and a largeness of scope that defies Netflix's limits as a streaming service. I've sat through spacebound flicks with a lot less to offer than this one, and it certainly doesn't deserve the disdain that comes from being attached to the increasingly worn Cloverfield name.

TL;DR: The Cloverfield Paradox is a loopy sci-fi thriller that does even less to serve Cloverfield fans than the previous entry, but it's still a fun genre riff.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 943

Reviews In This Series

10 Cloverfield Lane (Trachtenberg, 2016)

The Cloverfield Paradox (Onah, 2018)

Et Tu, Monkey?

Year: 2011
Director: Rupert Wyatt
Cast: James Franco, Andy Serkis, Freida Pinto
Run Time: 1 hour 45 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

Full disclosure. Before watching Rise of the Planet of the Apes, I had seen no other films in the illustrious Planet of the Apes franchise. But I'm sufficiently well-versed in pop culture to understand the significance of, say, the main character playing with a Statue of Liberty toy or subtle, discerning homages like the line "Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!" So let's just say I'm not exactly in the dark.

But enough monkeying around. We've got a prequel reboot requel(?) to review!

What? Like it's my fault your movie's pedigree is so confusing.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes, however it chooses to define itself, tells the story of Will Rodman (James Franco), a scientist working for an Evil Science Corporation testing experimental drugs on apes. During his experiments, he often lets his emotions get the best of him. Like the time he used his experimental Alzheimer's drug on his father (John Lithgow). Or the time he stole a baby monkey named Caesar (Andy Serkis covered in green balls) from the laboratory after his parents were killed following the cancellation of the testing and let him grow up in his well-appointed San Francisco home alongside his ailing parent. He brought a genetically mutated monkey home to hang out with his sick elderly dad. He's basically the worst movie scientist I've ever seen and I recently sat through some 50's sci-fi movies in which the only solution to any problem was to call in the troops and ask them to please bring the big tanks this time.

After the drug successfully eradicates his father's Alzheimer's for a couple years, Will's boss - Lord Business AKA Steven Jacobs (David Oyelowo) decides to allow further tests to continue. Soon afterward, a mishap with an angry neighbor causes the now-grown Caesar to violently act out and be sent away to an animal shelter run by John Landon (Brian Cox) and his petulant son Dodge (Tom Felton). There he meets dozens of mistreated chimpanzees, orangutans, and various other species of his kin. He sneaks them the new drug, which causes hyper-intelligence in apes, but festers dangerous disease in humans. And oh look, but a coworker has been infected and begins sneezing blood on just about anyone who asks.

Oh, also, Will gets a girlfriend, veterinarian Caroline (Freida Pinto), but she has no purpose in the plot, falls for him in under 30 seconds, and is never given a chance to use her skills with animals for any means. She's less important to this movie than James Franco's belly button.

Oh, also there's no good screenshots of her. Feminism!

The thing about RotPotA is that, despite having every possible warning sign, it's actually kinda good. Mind you, it's about as generic as a Hollywood thriller could possibly get and is filled to the brim with La La Land's typical brand of plot holes and quick-and-dirty conveniences (the Alzheimer's vaccine works in one day; nobody thinks to call a doctor when they start dramatically expelling blood from their nostrils), but it's charming for it. And in a franchise as strapped for quality entries as Planet of the Apes, it's hard not to sing the film's praises, though it does suffer from a bit of prequel disease, rendering its entire plot largely pointless because we know exactly what's going to happen.

The two strongest original elements the film brings to the table are its bright, polished aesthetic and its central theme (of growing up and leaving the past behind as you find the place where you belong; also man's hubris will destroy us all, yada yada yada), which hearkens back to the original film's intent without directly copying its message.

The filmmaking is smooth and precise, lending the movie with some beautiful sequences of great craft, including a wonderfully memorable aerial shot as well as several gliding Steadicam moments that guide the viewer through the film's spaces with a magisterial and skilled air. The story itself may be ruthlessly generic and the gore that aches to be in place during some of the more intense sequences is withheld by the PG-13 rating, but it's a well-made shiny diversion and we can't fault it for that.

That's right dad, hug the monkey. Hug the super sanitary, non-health code-violating monkey.

One enormous chink in the film's armor is the special effects. Andy Serkis is a genius in the craft of motion capture performance, so his Caesar is more than capable of carrying a movie on his shoulders. But the apes here are certainly no Gollum, or even King Kong circa 2005. The CGI monkeys seem to exist in a realm slightly to the left of our own in which everything is a little fuzzy around the edges and objects don't really respond to the weight of one's touch. It's decent enough to get the story across, but the animation keeps the film firmly out of reality. It's not like Planet of the Apes is supposed to be a hard-hitting, gritty neorealist drama, but you know what I mean.

Really, there's a lot to complain about with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but it's all ultimately inconsequential. When you have fun with a movie, why bother shouting into the hurricane? The plot is engaging, Caesar is a well-developed, earnest character, and there are enough nods to the horror genre (28 Days Later would be a more or less perfect double feature with this) to keep the darker side of the film intact. It didn't get snubbed in the 2012 Oscars for no reason, but it's a popcorn movie worth remembering. Here's hoping that Dawn of the Rise of the Planet of the Apes is just as refreshing.

TL;DR: Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a generic Hollywood blockbuster, but it's well-made enough to be a fun, slick time at the movies.
Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1004

Forrest Butler

Year: 2013

Director: Lee Daniels

Cast: Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, David Oyelowo

Run Time: 2 hours 12 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

For those of you who think Mr. Daniels needs to get his ego in check, let me clear the air. Due to copyright issues with a 1916 silent short film, of all things, the production company was unable to use their original title, The Butler. Thus Lee Daniels' The Butler was unceremoniously shoved into existence, and it is an enormously cumbersome title that I shall only use as a mark of solidarity to the poor filmmakers who were saddled with it.

Written by Danny Strong (who most notably played Jonathan on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it's hard to tell if this is a step up or a step down), Lee Daniels' The Butler is ostensibly based on a true story. Yeah, so is The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Adapted loosely from the life of White House butler Charles Allen, basically the only element they retained was that he was a butler. Oh, and he was black.

Well, we're off to a good start.

People have been up in arms about this film's dubious depictions of certain presidents and historical events to which I respond "duh." It's a historical film about how terribly black people were mistreated in America. The details are gonna be fudged a little to emphasize the emotion rather than 100% accurate historical fact. And anybody who thinks Martin Luther King, Jr.'s last words were about how awesome butlers are probably also thinks that Leatherface is still out there in a nursing home somewhere.

The film follows Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker), a man who was born on a plantation and watched his mother (Mariah Carey who doesn't open her mouth once, thankfully) raped and his father killed by a white landowner (Alex Pettyfer, and a role that is essentially pure evil still doesn't stop me from wanting to make out with him). This super slavey narrative takes place in 1926, and correct me if I'm wrong but that one does feel a little off to me. 

Anyway he is taken in, taught how to serve in a house, and eventually makes his way to the whitest house of all (in more ways than one) serving a variety of stunt casted actors wearing prosthetics. I mean... American presidents. Here's where the Forrest Gumpiness really kicks in as Cecil serves his way through critical presidencies and his son Louis (David Oyelowo) finds his way smack dab into the middle of the Civil Rights movement.

And some pretty fantastic hairstyles.

Louis sits in at Woolworth's, Freedom Rides, hangs out with Black Panthers, and is even in the hotel room with Martin Luther King the day of his assassination. The length to which Strong reaches to cover every last expanse of the movement leads to a scattershot narrative led by events and setpieces that are not so much defined by the world of the movie as they are by the audience's previous knowledge of history.

If you sat a six-year-old, or perhaps a foreigner with little knowledge of American history in front of Lee Daniels' The Butler, all the meaningful lingering shots and presidential imitators in the world wouldn't help them decipher the main storyline. The script relies heavily on narration (Come on, Danny Strong! I trusted you!) and meanders through history from the Eisenhower presidency to Nelson Mandela, eventually skipping freaking decades to the 2008 election.

Now for all the flaws and mostly generic filmmaking in LDtB, it does get its point across. White people were truly awful to black people in America. Even today, that message has value and is an important thing to remember. This is where we came from. Slavery, segregation, and the KKK aren't just fairy tales from a long forgotten time. Some of this stuff happened less than half a century ago. The film's depiction of the atrocities committed against the black community are immediate and affecting in a way that makes one realize history isn't just in books. This all played out on the national stage and there are people alive today who saw it happen.

And one scene in particular stands out as the Greensboro sit ins are intercut with a White House dinner party. This artistic touch shows finally that there was somebody alive behind the camera with a few tricks up his sleeve. Only a few, but at least they're there.

So the movie isn't boring, no not at all. It was quite engaging in terms of raising awareness despite its flaws as a narrative. On the backs of Whitaker, Oyelowo, and Oprah Winfrey especially as Cecil's put-upon wife Gloria, the film is elevated above what could have been a tepid and thoroughly mediocre affair.

As if She would put her support behind something subpar. 

TL;DR: Lee Daniels' The Butler is generic but its depiction of historical events make them more real than any textbook.

Rating: 6/10

Should I Spend Money On This? Catch it on Netflix when it comes out in a year, you won't mind missing it in theaters.

Word Count: 853