Shimmer And Fade

Year: 2018

Director: Alex Garland

Cast: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson

Run Time: 1 hour 55 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

There are certain combinations of director and actor that you can't ignore. Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg. Pedro Almodóvar and Penélope Cruz. Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. And with only Ex Machina as evidence, I'd already say Alex Garland and Oscar Isaac were one of those pairs. Of course, sometimes you get Edward Scissorhands and sometimes you get Dark Shadows, so there's always a risk there, but I wasn't not gonna go see Annihilation.

Gimme all the Oscar you've got, the shirtlesser the better.

OK, so the plot... The plot. It sure is a plot. I think. Lena (Natalie Portman) is a military veteran biologist who is now a professor at Johns Hopkins, whose husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) has been MIA on a military operation for a year. When he shows up randomly one evening in a near-catatonic state before falling terribly ill and internally bleeding all over her damn carpet, she realizes that his mission may not have been a particularly routine one.

She and Kane are taken to a military outpost in a national park that is the site of a mysterious phenomenon called the Shimmer, a zone surrounded by light that keeps expanding. Everyone who has been sent into this zone has never returned... except Kane. An all-female science expedition is about to make their way into this zone, led by the sketchy psychologist Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and made up of the brash Chicago paramedic Anya (Gina Rodriguez), shy physicist Josie (Tessa Thompson), and nihilistic geologist Cass (Tuva Novotny). Lena asks to be able to lend her skills to the group and just maybe figure out what happened to her husband. When they enter the Shimmer, they discover an environment where the laws of physics don't apply, and mutated beasts roam the gorgeous, forbidding swamp. As they make their way to the lighthouse at the center, what they encounter will rattle them to their very DNA.

They also touch a lot of things without gloves, which is the most disturbing part of the movie for yours truly.

Annihilation is a very cerebral film, with a lot of different interpretations as to what's actually going on and what it might mean. This isn't dissimilar from Ex Machina, necessarily, but the way it goes about it is much more in-your-face arthousey. That's not meant as a detraction, but the ambitions of the movie to be a beautiful metaphor for a cavalcade of elements of the human condition are a little misguided, because for a lot of the time the movie just isn't that.

Honestly, the earliest comparison that comes to mind is The Cloverfield Paradox, with all the muddled popcorn movie baggage that comes along with that. With one dropped line in the beginning, they provide a decidedly liberal umbrella explanation for a whole cavalcade of random sci-fi bullshit, very little of which actively corresponds to any of the major thematic interpretations going on here. Annihilation wants to have its cake and analyze it too, but there's a lot of sound and fury in the first half of the film that just doesn't connect at the end of the day.

But sparkles!

But wow, what a gorgeous film it is. At least once every five minutes comes a shot that you could frame and hang up in your house, displaying the vast grandeur of the sci-fi universe it has created with all the awe-inspiring scale that it deserves. And the design of the plants and creatures in the Shimmer is excruciatingly detailed, drawing beauty from the grotesque and presenting sight after sight of nature turned on its head in appealing yet subtly unsettling ways. If this was just a travelogue promoting some semi-terrestrial safari, it would be a perfect movie. 

But there do happen to be humans in this movie and they are going through the motions of a plot, so there we are. The cast is mostly strong, but oddly the off notes come from the places you'd least expect them. Oscar Isaac, for one, isn't given a terribly prominent role, but is imprisoned inside a grating accent that just won't let him flourish, so it's a blessing that he's not onscreen that often. And Natalie Portman herself is probably being directed to be as bland as she is, but the ticking biological clock that is meant to generate suspense in the second half of the film is not in any way reflected by her physicality, and it falls entirely flat. And then there's the incomparable Jennifer Jason Leigh, who is making an incredibly strange series of choices that provide a restrained, keening performance that I'm not entirely convinced I like.

Gina Rodriguez, who has heretofore been known primarily for comedy, is the obvious standout here. She leaps from providing levity to ratcheting up the tension without making any huge, obvious shifts, letting a multitude of tones inhabit her character in a seamless, authentic manner. 

And if the performers aren't drawing you in, neither is the plot. Annihilation does generate a level of interest in its spooky mayhem for a while, as you're playing catch-up with what the hell is happening here in the Shimmer. But after more and more scenes of characters clubbing you over the head with dialogue that loudly announces "WE'RE GOING TO DISCUSS THE THEME OF THE MOVIE NOW!" with the obvious handicap that the more arthousey elements are grafted onto a basic sci-fi slasher structure, it just fails to impress on a structural level.

Don't get me wrong, when Annihilation gets into its third act, it leans in hard on those elements and finally cuts itself loose from anything resembling commercial entertainment. You can't watch the closing twenty minutes in any state other than transfixed rapture as it blends the ever-beautiful cinematography with the evocative motion of ballet to create something marvelous and cinematic, the likes of which haven't been seen since 2001: A Space Odyssey or maybe 2014's Under the Skin. 

Plus there is one moment with a bear that's flat-out the most terrifying scene of the year, I'm calling it now. So yeah, it's overall a win, but there's so much going wrong here it's more of a testament to how strong the movie is as a visual piece of craft more than an act of storytelling.

TL;DR: Annihilation is a beautifully achieved work of cerebral sci-fi, but it might not be quite as deep as it thinks it is.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1095

This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think

Year: 2017

Director: Rian Johnson

Cast: Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Mark Hamill

Run Time: 1 hours 32 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Here it is, the reason I've come out of retirement. I decided to stop reviewing current movies shortly after Rogue One, but I've always had a worry gnawing at the back of my mind that that meant I wouldn't be able to weigh in on the next chapter in the Star Wars canon. Well now the veil has been lifted, and he reviewer has been loosed upon the world once more. Let's dive into it, shall we?

Cue applause.

Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi picks up more or less immediately after the events of The Force Awakens. Rey (Daisy Ridley) is on the galaxy's most absurdly gorgeous island (and the characters keep using the term"galaxy" as if that term encompasses the whole of creation, and it bothered me slightly less than in Guardians of the Galaxy, but still a lot more than it should) to solicit the help of legendary Jedi hermit Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) int he fight against the First Order and maybe learn a thing or two about this Force business in the process. Meanwhile, in a very Empire Strikes Back fashion, while Rey has a space-Buddhist adventure into the inner workings of life itself, her friends are fighting for their lives out in space.

A battle between the dwindling Resistance forces - led by General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher, in her final appearance as the character not played by a horrifying CGI specter) and purple-haired Vice-Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern) - and a First Order fleet - led by the rogue's gallery of Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis), his apprentice Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), and General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) - has reached a brief standstill, but things aren't looking hot for the good guys.

While Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) chafes against authority due to his insatiable and potentially dangerous drive to be a hero, Stormtrooper ex-pat Finn (John Boyega) teams up with maintenance worker Rose (Kelly Marie Tran, the newest star to be scooped from obscurity to light up screens worldwide) to find a master codebreaker to help them yadda yadda science fiction words. Look, there's a ticking clock and they're trying to save the Resistance and preserve hope for the galaxy.

A whole galaxy! It's, like, really important!

What's most striking about The Last Jedi is how small-scale everything really is. We do visit some spectacular new environments (and one that's mostly just Hoth 2.0), but the bulk of the story takes place within a couple square miles, or whatever the space term is for that. That's not in and of itself a bad thing (the original Star Wars only has a couple settings it switches between), but I think the reason I felt claustrophobic is that the main battle is stuck in a holding pattern that sucks out every bit of narrative tension like an industrial vacuum. It kind of prevents any sort of real action, and all the participants are content to just kind of sit and wait for the important characters to figure things out, while sitting around discussing their differing philosophies over tea.

OK, I may have exaggerated a bit, but really not by that much, and that's probably the biggest flaw in a movie riddled with flaws. To be fair, it's also riddled with triumphs, but The Last Jedi is audacious, conceptually and visually, and that bold ambition comes with a willingness to take risks and stumble that The Force Awakens was not willing to indulge. And that's probably why the latter was a whole lot better as a popcorn spectacle when all is said and done.

The Last Jedi is full of these contradictions, which is why it has been so hard for any reviewer to wrap their head around it. It very clearly has a better director, and Rian Johnson (of Brick and Looper) delivers images of such pure, magnetic beauty that it's impossible to dislike the movie as a whole. From the set design (a Resistance bomber ship in an early scene is an impeccably crafted space with lived-in functionality) to the costume design (a new set of storm troopers that are basically blood red samurai) to the space warfare (one key moment is literally breathtaking; every process in your body will briefly stop to appreciate the sheer beauty), The Last Jedi is a sublimely accomplished visual work. But as a story, it falls apart like a ham shank left in the crock pot for too long.

Maybe I shouldn't be writing this review right before lunch.

For a movie with such a generous run time, the story fails to find room to develop most of its dramatic beats, shoehorning in scenes of grand import that weren't properly established and thus have the impact of a handful of cotton balls being thrown at your face. It doesn't help that the dialogue in these scenes is brutally clunky, and relies on aspects of the Force and Jedi lore that have never made an appearance in the film canon and frankly made no sense to begin with. Fans of the extended Star Wars mythos may find a lot to dig into here, but as someone who has never found the struggles of the Jedi and their philosophies anything but hokey, it's hard to find any emotional stakes in the proceedings.

I suppose this is just a symptom of a problem Star Wars has always had. The divide between the Dark Side and the Light is written as the malleable, porous line that can be crossed all too easily if you're not careful. But basically every one of the franchise's villains is a scarred, sneering mustache-twirler in all black, obliterating whatever shades of grey the plot wants you to imagine there might be. So whenever a character struggles with being pulled toward the dark, it's hard to see what could possibly be so tempting about it.

Seriously, who's looking at this guy and thinking, "He looks like he'd be a good boss."

Honestly, there are moments here that are just lame. In addition to what it pretty objectively objectively the most idiotic scene to ever grace a Star Wars picture (you'll know it when you f**king see it), there are a handful of sequences that exist exclusively as fanservice, and they're exhausting to suffer through.

Looking at all these flaws, I should honestly be infuriated by this movie, but I'm not. There's the trouble with The Last Jedi. What's good is so damn good, and even if more than a good half of the movie was dull and overwrought (the actual number is probably closer to 35%), it would be enough to shift the scales toward a positive score.

For one thing, the wacky humor that has secretly always been present in the Star Wars franchise is back in full force, and although anything Poe does is ripped straight from the mouth of Star-Lord and frankly doesn't work all that well, there's a sense of kiddie matinee fun that runs through the whole thing. The biggest and maybe not best example of this is the Porgs, this episode's answer to the Ewoks. They're these cute little rodents that only exist for comic relief, and I'm deeply upset by how much I loved them.

I KNOW this only exists to sell plushies, but damn it it's working.

OK, the Porgs are bound to be divisive, but they really are a sterling example of the register The Last Jedi shoots for, and  more often than not hits on the mark. For instance, BB-8 continues to be the best new character in the franchise, and his every exploit continues to bring me unending joy (He's also allowed to get a little bloodthirsty when push comes to shove, and it's rad as hell).

Another good thing (there are more than I've been letting on, because the bad things can be so loud) is Rose, an entirely charming new character who might feel more at home in a spin-off like Rogue One but really holds her own against the more established ensemble. I don't know where they plucked her from, but they need to keep returning to that well.

Plus, when The Last Jedi goes big it goes big. The action sequences are pretty stellar, and occasionally even surprisingly gory (at a "family-friendly" Indiana Jones level, not a The Prowler level, just in case you were worried), and the universe-building is as weird and charming as the franchise fans should have come to expect. 

In short, it's a water cooler popcorn movie that's definitely worth your time, even though it has some massive holes to patch up come Episode IX. This is a step down, but it's not quite a stumble. Even though with a worse director it certainly would have been. 

TL;DR: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi is a beautiful, stunning popcorn adventure with some really wonky storytelling over a terribly indulgent run time.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1504

Reviews In This Series
Star Wars (Lucas, 1977)
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980)
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (Marquand, 1983)
Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (Abrams, 2015)
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Edwards, 2016)
Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (Johnson, 2017)
Solo: A Star Wars Story (Howard, 2018)

It's The End Of The World As We Know It

Year: 2016

Director: Bryan Singer

Cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence 

Run Time: 2 hours 24 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

I owe a debt of gratitude to the X-Men films. The original trilogy powered me all the way through my childhood, giving me characters to root for and fueling endless playground discussions. I formed a bond with those people and that world, a bond so strong it allowed me to sit through X-Men: Apocalypse in its entirety without rending my hair and running away screaming. I don’t have particularly strong feelings for X-Men: First Class, the progenitor of this prequel cycle, and Days of Future Past was a gargantuan letdown, so I can’t say I had high hopes for Apocalypse, but even those feeble wisps of optimism were dashed into oblivion.

If this movie really was the End Times for this franchise, I can’t say I’d be upset.

In X-Men: Apocalypse, Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) are happily running a school for mutants. It’s the 1980’s and the student body has received an influx of familiar faces: laser-eyed Scott Summer (Tye Sheridan) AKA Cyclops (although in typical comic book movie fashion, they go ahead and assume you already knew that), the telekinetic Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), and the fireworky Jubilee (Lana Condor), who the movie is even less interested in than I am. They are joined by the teleporting blue demon Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who is brought to the school by Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), shape-shifted into the form of Jennifer Lawrence, who rescued him from a mutant dogfighting ring led by a cross between Wily Wonka and Liza Minnelli from Cabaret.

Mystique brings bad news. After a personal tragedy, Magneto (Michael Fassbender, who mails in this performance) has resurfaced. The X-Men must band together, yadda yadda, CIA agent Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) is back so we can pretend Charles isn’t super gay for Magneto, and so on. Also, the better Quicksilver (Evan Peters) is back. If you’re allergic to names in parentheses, you may want to skip this next paragraph.

Moira witnessed a cult resurrecting En Sabah Nur (Oscar Isaac), the mythical first mutant who is so powerful [sic] that he thinks he’s a god. He’s also called Apocalypse (gasp), but again the movie doesn’t see fit to divulge that apparently classified information. Apocalypse needs four horsemen to serve him, so he sets about gathering the strongest mutants in the world. Or, bar that, the first ones he bumps into: weather-controlling teen Storm (Alexandra Shipp), bewinged Angel (Ben Hardy), psychic sword lady(?) Psylocke (Olivia Munn), and Magneto. This arbitrary gaggle of mutants teleports around the world, power posing and generally wreaking havoc. Speaking of, Havok (Lucas Till) is in this movie too, for so long you’d actually think he was an important character. So yeah. The horsemen power pose and kill some people and, like, control the first or something, because they want to tear down this world and build a new one.

But mostly they just indulge in their hobby of recreating Backstreet Boys album covers.

From what I’ve been told, the Apocalypse run is kind of a big deal in the comics. An ancient, hyperpowered, megalomaniacal menace, Apocalypse is a formidable foe on paper (literally). But in the film, other than kicking up some monochromatic dust storms and tearing apart two or so sterile, humanless cities, the worst thing this omnipotent übermutant does is make James McAvoy go bald. He’s about as menacing as a kitten in a teacup, and the superb Oscar Isaac is totally buried beneath a metric ton of makeup and shouted dialogue more plum than his skin tone.

The musical score might cut itself open and bleed itself dry impressing upon you the monumental significance of what you’re witnessing, but there’s barely a shred of doubt that this pompous Blue Man Group reject will be destroyed by the power of friendship or whatever. X-Men suffers the same way Civil War does with a preponderance of overpowered characters (Jean Grey is this entry’s Scarlet Witch, pretty much any solving any story problem with her endless array of talents, then hanging around twiddling her thumbs so we can try to care about the outcome of a bout between two far weaker characters), rendering any conflict pretty much useless the second the movie decides it has gone on long enough. But boy oh boy, does Apocalypse really deliberate before making that decision.

Clocking in at around 144 minutes of disconnected vignettes about any of a half million different characters, Apocalypse really struggles to find a personality. Sometimes it’s a sprawling superhero adventure. Other times it’s a wacky high school comedy about mismatched teens. But mostly it’s a dreary, deafening plea to be taken seriously. Honestly, when did comic book movies stop trying to be fun? One bungled Wolverine cameo later, and the film has depleted every last resource at its disposal. Then there’s an hour of flailing before the end credits mercifully inter the godforsaken mess.

Unfortunately, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from X-Men, it’s that dead things rarely stay that way.

The movie isn’t exactly helped by a visibly exhausted cast. The teens try their hardest to punch up their hokey storyline, but the only adult who even seems to be aware they’re on a movie set is James McAvoy. Rose Byrne performs her thankless role with the brute efficiency of a machine, Jennifer Lawrence falls back on prickly Katniss-isms, and Michael Fassbender is a million miles away. His palpable desire to be anywhere else does little to sell a forced family tragedy shoehorned in to give him a bit of insta-motivation, and it certainly doesn’t render palatable an exceedingly tasteless scene set at Auschwitz.

Although, truth be told, Magneto is mostly played by a CGI Ken doll being dragged around the screen. You can practically see the mouse pointer. That’s right, this entry continues the venerable tradition of rendering its mutants with special effects that were outdated in the WarGames era. They’re lucky a large theme of the movie is Mystique and Beast resisting their powers, because their SFX budget begins and ends with one (1) set of metal wings and maybe a handful of explosions. The rest is an X-Men: Evolution cartoon-level of work. The winking humor about how third sequels always suck can’t save the ruthlessly disastrous aesthetic of Apocalypse.

Now that I’ve purged my bile, I will submit that there are maybe a smattering of good things about the movie. McAvoy provides some solid first act comic relief, the teens are sufficiently likeable, and the crummy sub-Big Bang Theory opening credits that zoom through history’s greatest hits feature an exploding swastika, which is pretty righteous. And of course, there’s the obligatory Quicksilver slo-mo scene, which is shameless, pandering, inexcusably lazy, and still the best thing in the whole damn movie.

When Evan Peters makes more of an impression than Michael Fassbender, you know something has gone terribly wrong. And indeed it has. Many volumes of somethings. Unfathomable depths of somethings. It’s far from the worst movie out this year, or even this month, but it is a solemn disappointment.

TL;DR: X-Men Apocalypse is a sprawling, inept mess that wastes a bevy of talented performers.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1210
Reviews In This Series
X-Men (Singer, 2000)
X2: X-Men United (Singer, 2003)
X-Men: The Last Stand (Ratner, 2006)
X-Men: First Class (Vaughn, 2011)
X-Men: Days of Future Past (Singer, 2014)
X-Men: Apocalypse (Singer, 2016)

I Have A Good Feeling About This

Year: 2015

Director: J. J. Abrams

Cast: Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac

Run Time: 2 hours 15 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Whether or not I liked Star Wars: The Force Awakens is beside the point. The film is well on its way to making enough money to buy its own solar system, so people are clearly seeing it. The question really should be whether or not it’s good enough to deserve the record-obliterating box office it will loudly amass over the course of the next few months. That’s pretty unequivocally a no, considering that nothing short of a film directed by God himself could truly be worthy of that kind of money. But as a three decades later sequel to the single most culturally important film trilogy ever created (prequels? Never heard of ‘em.), it’s still pretty damn terrific.

As the first sequel in forward continuity since 1983, the first Star Wars not to be directed by the increasingly dubious producer/despot George Lucas since 1983, and the first appearance of Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, and Peter Mayhew (among others) in their original roles since 1983, The Force Awakens is pretty much doomed to thwart the Mount Everest of expectations riding on it. However, when compared to the likes of delayed sequels like Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, Terminator: Genisys, and even Jurassic World, The Force Awakens is a magnum opus of revival cinema, nestling snugly into the universe of its own franchise and always feeling like an organic next step to the story.

Our fridges are safe from nuking.

And now, a bare bones plot summary that attempts to avoid any and all spoilers. What fun this shall be. We start with our three torch-passees, the new blood that will become the backbone of this new trilogy (plus the books, cartoons, multimedia gaming experiences, live shows, and shared universe spin-offs that Disney will inevitably wring from this property): Rey (Daisy Ridley), a tough scavenger who is awaiting her long-departed family on the desert planet Jakku; Fin (John Boyega), a mutinous storm trooper attempting to escape the clutches of the evil First Order; and Poe (Oscar Isaac, freshly shaved after Ex Machina), a Resistance pilot with a cocky attitude and an adorable droid best friend called BB-8, whose merchandise you will have pre-ordered by the time the credits roll.

For a variety of reasons, both willingly and unwillingly, they become a part of the Resistance attack on the First Order, the shadowy eeevil complex that has replaced the Empire. They will have to get past the wicked and ginger General Hux (Domhnall Glesson) and the masked Jedi Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), who are both under the thumb of Supreme Leader Snoke (mocapper extraordinaire Andy Serkis). Who will win? Will these inexperienced youngsters ever become true heroes?

Will I ever be able to pay off those BB-8 related purchases on my credit card bill?

I would like to open by saying that I’ve never been a fanboy for Star Wars. I appreciate the films for what they are, but I’m certainly no ride-or-die, midnight screening, AT-AT pronunciation debating obsessive. I in no way felt obligated to like The Force Awakens, so you can imagine my surprise when I kind of loved it. It has its share of deficiencies, and we’ll get to that, but for the time being let’s bask in the triumph of this seventh Star Wars entry easily settling into the consensus-approved third best slot in the franchise.

One of the best things about The Force Awakens is that, while it is absolutely a nostalgia trip, it remains entirely modern and individualized. It engages with the original story, characters, and technology, but it’s not a clip show. We don’t see our heroes jetting off to pick up MacGuffins on Hoth or Tatooine, and you certainly don’t see them paying a visit to the Ewoks on Endor or sifting through Trade Federation file cabinets on Naboo. Some planets might be more than a little reminiscent of previous locales, but The Force Awakens keeps its gaze firmly forward. The returning characters do have some catching up to do, but their plot lines revolve around the present consequences of their past lives, not sitting around looking at scrapbooks of the good ol’ days. That was a long time ago.

In a galaxy far, far away.

In fact, the new characters and material are frequently where the film works best. The dialogue is a little more winking and modern than some fans will appreciate, but the character dynamics they build are tremendously effective. Oscar Isaac’s Poe is easily the most charismatic star-making performance, but Ridley and Boyega miraculously hold their own in an arena a million times more epic than their entire filmographies combined, each developing meaningful relationships with old and new cast members alike.

Also, major kudos to the villain casting department. I never in my wildest peyote dreams would have suggested the douche from Girls and the wimpy ginger from Ex Machina as sneering baddies, but it undeniably works. They don’t get to flex their muscles fully here, presumably reserving the First Order’s bigger firepower for the sequels, but both get their moment in the sun, Gleeson in a deliciously terrifying more-than-a-little Nazi-esque speech, and driver in a few scenes of vulnerable intensity that even overpower the script’s tritest nuggets, all of which seem to get dumped over his lusciously-locked head. The only bum note is Andy Serkis’ Stoke, who embodies a woefully blah brand of Disney villainy.

Even Thanos must be a little embarrassed for him.

Speaking of Guardians of the Galaxy, The Force Awakens is actually extremely similar to that Marvel-Disney triumph. It makes a name for itself with colorful characters, playful dialogue, and rip-roarin’ action sequences, all of which are thickly plastered over one of the most thinly generic plots a couple hundred million dollars can buy. I mean, really? [Medium Spoilers Another, slightly larger Death Star? Color me unsurprised.] Dumb and Dumber To had a more complex throughline. Now, I’m not saying that a typical plot sinks this movie, but the story is just a heap of radio serial boilerplate and is certainly not one of the many numbers of reasons to see The Force Awakens.

Between the tissue paper-thin story structure and a couple stunted character arcs that are clearly looking to unfold in the long term but give nothing to the current film, I can confidently conclude that The Force Awakens is not a masterpiece. However, if things go well, I can completely see this as the dazzling but inferior A New Hope to Episode VIII’s triumphantly gigantic Empire Strikes Back. Obviously I don’t know what’s in store for us on that front, but this is a great film with room for huge improvement. I honestly think that’s the best place for the franchise to land at this point.

At any rate, Star Wars is back! I didn’t know it was possible, but we’ve finally returned to that grand, adventurous space opera in style. With all the grubby detail and cosmic swashbuckling of the original films, hitched on to a totally current slate of character diversity, adrenalized banter, universe expansion, and cute as hell droidsmanship, the franchise is finally back on solid ground after decades of aimlessly drifting through the inky void.

TL;DR: Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a simple but inviting story that returns to the Star Wars universe with style.
Rating: 8/10
Word Count: 1246
Reviews In This Series
Star Wars (Lucas, 1977)
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980)
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (Marquand, 1983)
Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (Abrams, 2015)
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Edwards, 2016)
Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (Johnson, 2017)
Solo: A Star Wars Story (Howard, 2018)

Mark Zuckerberg or: The Modern Prometheus

Year: 2015

Director: Alex Garland

Cast: Alicia Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac

Run Time: 1 hour 48 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Technology is evil and we should be afraid of it. This has been a running narrative of filmmaking since the very beginning. Henry Frankenstein learned the consequences of playing God in the 1930’s, 1950’s scientists wreaked havoc in their reckless pursuit of knowledge in nuclear flicks like Godzilla or Them!, and technology usurped humanity in the likes of Demon Seed and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Then things got real weird in the 80’s as machines grew self aware in The Terminator, WarGames, and even the crummy slasher Evilspeak.

Then, once we escaped The Matrix, came the Japanese fears of their own accelerated advances in Ringu, Pulse, and One Missed Call. But as society flashes forward in leaps and bounds, so do our celluloid perils. We are no longer afraid of clunky VHS tapes and desktop computers because we’re dealing with tech on a global scale Every computer is connected via the Internet and harm can come to you remotely, whether it be a virus, a catfisher, or merely sustained surveillance. This has been the subject of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and even this month’s Spectre. But while technology’s scope has expanded, our contact is more personal than ever thanks to social media, online shopping records and browser histories.

Ex Machina has entered the room.

In Ex Machina, Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is a young programmer working for an enormously profitable tech company. When the reclusive company owner Nathan (Oscar Isaac) invites Caleb to spend the week at his secluded mountain lodge/fortress, he jumps at the chance to meet the great man. He’s surprised to learn that Nathan is a hard-drinking, lascivious man with a strange, glaring intensity, but he’s even more surprised to learn that he has been invited to test Nathan’s new prototype of artificial intelligence, a female android named Ava (Alicia Vikander).

He discovers that Ava has an astonishingly human personality, which causes him to question her artificiality as well as his own identity. When tensions arise in the compound, he must decide whether to side with Ava, who appears to be growing a romantic interest in him, or Nathan, whose intentions seem more and more murky.

I mean, he didn’t even include a “dislike” button.

Forget that Spectre “Christoph Waltz is monitoring our YouTube videos” claptrap, this is the true tech suspense film for our generation. Ex Machina explores our implicit trust of gadgetry within the context of a burgeoning relationship. It’s a more twisted version of Her, a dark attraction that could easily be superimposed with a tech-obsessed dad and Siri, or Amazon’s Alexa. Aa we grow more introverted and cut off our human interaction, technology slowly begins to fill the void. Of course, there are two sides to every modern development, but Ex Machina is an eloquent argument for the opposition.

Ex Machina’s thesis is delicately painted on a visual canvas by writer-director Alex Garland, with an attention to detail that matches his incredibly nuanced script. Working closely with production designer Mark Digby’s stark, modern steel and glass architecture, Garland creates vivid images, utilizing pristine reflections as a recurring motif. The rest of Ex Machina’s aesthetic builds off this cold but impeccably composed photography, coming to life in equal measures during dangerous situations that are flooded with blood red light or reflective moments realized in crisp black and white.

The film moves through space and time like an intricate ballet with a equally mechanical perfection. It does not rush its story, nor does it press its symbolism, some of which is strikingly obvious, but all of which allows the viewer to approach on their own time. One early on reveal is the slightest bit clunky, but the plot otherwise slides powerfully forward like a sinuous snake, fangs bared to deliver the killing blow.

Ex Machina inspires spontaneous poetic rapture in film critics. I apologize for the inconvenience.

The film’s unbearably slippery, sleek aesthetic carries over to the score, which is halfway between the guttural synth of The Guest and Disasterpeace’s electric serenade from It Follows. It’s a hardly original post-Carpenter sound, but it flows through Ex Machina like an electronic river, powering its dark, emotional left.

However, the true centerpiece of Ex Machina is its human, or rather – inhuman element. Alicia Vikander’s performance is a flat-out stunning piece of character creation. Her complex motivations and unnatural physical poise are captured flawlessly by her wide, expressive eyes. Ava is no droning Doctor Who Dalek or monotone sci-fi creation with arms covered in rubber tubing. She is a shaded, detailed being, far more than either of her onscreen companions. And yet she is unmistakably, uncannily artificial. The single best acting moments of the entire film come when her voice acquires a subtly robotic catch in the middle of certain sentences, betraying her fabrication. Just like the rest of the film, it is elegant and unimaginably precise.

Gleeson and Isaac also have their moments of glory (especially the latter, whose larger-than-life portrayal is ineffably unnerving), but this is Vikander’s show through and through. She is Ex Machina in a microcosm: incredibly calculated and accomplished, hiding a dark secret behind a modern, accessible exterior. It’s an exciting, atmospheric watch. Don’t bring the DVD along on a date night, but the next time it rains (which might be never, here in California), put on your thinking cap and pop it in. Just make sure your phone is shut off, or Siri might get jealous.

TL;DR: Ex Machina is a sleek, chilling technological thriller with razor sharp subtext.

Rating: 8/10

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