Movie Review: Death Wish

Death Wish ** / *****

Directed by: Eli Roth.

Written by: Joe Carnahan based on the novel by Brian Garfield and the screenplay by Wendell Mayes.

Starring: Bruce Willis (Paul Kersey), Vincent D'Onofrio (Frank Kersey), Elisabeth Shue (Lucy Kersey), Camila Morrone (Jordan Kersey), Dean Norris (Detective Kevin Raines), Beau Knapp (Knox), Kimberly Elise (Detective Leonore Jackson), Len Cariou (Ben), Jack Kesy (The Fish), Ronnie Gene Blevins (Joe), Kirby Bliss Blanton (Bethany).

 

I can easily see a way that a version of Death Wish could be updated, and relevant, for 2018 – but the version directed by Eli Roth is not that film. The 1974 original starred Charles Bronson, as a man pushed too far, after his wife and daughter victims of a home invasion – the wife raped and murdered, the daughter raped and traumatized – Bronson decides to strike back at the “animals” who did this too his family – even if he doesn’t really know who those people are. That spoke to audiences in 1974 – when violent crime in America really was on the rise, and people in major cities were afraid to go out at night. In 2018, violent crime is actually down – the lowest it’s been in decades – but there are places (Fox News, the NRA among them) who still want to make people afraid – it’s good for business. I think a new version of Death Wish should at least address that. But this movie doesn’t really do that – it is basically a feature length version of the NRA tagline “Nothing will stop a bad guy with a gun, except a good guy with a gun”.

 

This time the movie takes place in Chicago, not New York (it’s no coincidence, they’ve picked the most violent city in America), and Paul Kersey (Bruce Willis) is now a surgeon, not an architect (or an accountant, as he was in the original novel). He has a beautiful wife (Elisabeth Shue) and teenage daughter (Camila Morrone) about to go off to college. The same basic thing happens as in the original – a trio of thugs break into the house when Paul isn’t there – his wife ends up dead, his daughter in a coma (thankfully, the movie spares us of either of them getting raped, although the threat is certainly there with the daughter). Paul ends up getting himself a gun, and going out onto the streets to get revenge on all the bad people out there. Two detectives, Raines and Jackson (Dean Norris and Kimberly Elise) try to find out who attacked his family. When Kersey visits Raines at work one day, and sees a bulletin board full of open homicides, he is assured that most of those crimes are gang related – “asshole on asshole” crimes that won’t be solved. But Kersey’s case is different. He doesn’t say why, but then again, he doesn’t need to.

 

The movie gets bloody – as you expect from a movie from Roth. He lingers over one scene of torture in particular, but all of the violence in the film is over-the-top in how bloody and ridiculous it can be. Roth cannot seem to decide if he wants to go full on exploitation and fun with the violence (hell, there’s a scene in which one of the bad guy literally gets hit in the head with a bowling ball) or he wants to make something where the violence hurts – where you feel it in the audience.

 

The original novel that Death Wish is based on is actually very anti-vigilante justice – the novel’s Paul Kersey essentially goes insane, and by the end of the novel is killing unarmed kids because he doesn’t like the way they look. He even wrote a sequel after the original movie came out to make his stance even more explicit (that book was turned into a much better, underseen movie by James Wan in 2007 – although it doesn’t have all that much to do with the novel either). The original movie at least pays lip service to being anti-vigilante as well – the cop investigating the crimes figures out who is behind them, and wants to arrest him – but his hands are tied by the higher ups. No matter what Roth says in interviews about the film (and by the way, whenever I read interviews with Roth, I am always struck by the feeling that I would really like the movie he thought he made – it just rarely matches the movie he actually made), that’s basically gone here. There is one good sequence in the film – a montage of Kersey the surgeon removing bullets from shooting victims, and Kersey the vigilante dad loading his gun that points out the absurdity of the two sides of him), but the film never really delves into that. There are talk radio montages that debate the killings Kersey does – when he becomes a social media celebrity the “Grim Reaper” because of YouTube videos of him in action.

 

I think much of this undercut though by the fact that unlike the original novel or film, this Kersey actually does track down those responsible for hurting his family. It’s harder to question that sort of justice being meted out against people we know are guilty, and have seen do horrible things. This Kersey is far easier to understand and root for.

 

Willis is probably the wrong actor to play this role – but then again, so was Bronson (originally, the 1974 film was supposed to be directed by Sidney Lumet, and Jack Lemmon was to star – Bronson always said that he thought the role should have gone to Dustin Hoffman – although, Hoffman did a version of it in Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs in 1971). Willis is an action hero, so we immediately accept him as a killing machine and a hero. The film is essentially a fantasy version for every civilian with a gun, who knows – just KNOWS – that if he was at that school, that concert, that mall when that asshole started shooting everyone with an AR-15, that he would run in, and put an end to it. There was a possibility that a new Death Wish could reflect on, or at least mirror, the America that exists today. This isn’t that film.

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Movie Review: Red Sparrow

Red Sparrow ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Francis Lawrence.

Written by: Justin Haythe based on the novel by Jason Matthews.

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence (Dominika Egorova), Joel Edgerton (Nathaniel Nash), Matthias Schoenaerts (Vanya Egorov), Charlotte Rampling (Matron), Mary-Louise Parker (Stephanie Boucher), Ciarán Hinds (Zakharov), Joely Richardson (Nina), Bill Camp (Marty Gable), Jeremy Irons (Korchnoi), Thekla Retuen (Marta), Douglas Hodge (Maxim Volontov), Sakina Jaffrey (Trish Forsythe).

 

The fundamental problem that Red Sparrow is never able to overcome is that it is a movie entirely about its plot, and yet its plot doesn’t really matter. You never really feel that all that much is at stake during the runtime, because the movie never really tells you what exactly is at stake. All we really know is a Russian spy, Dominika (Jennifer Lawrence) has been assigned to go to Budapest to cozy up to an American spy, Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton) to find out who Nash’s mole inside Russian intelligence is. Since we don’t know what this mole does, or what information he is providing, we never really know what will happen if the mole is exposed. In theory, it shouldn’t matter – it should be a classic McGuffin, in which it doesn’t matter to the audience why it matters to the characters, just that we know it does. Yet, it’s hard to find anything else to hold onto in the movie. It’s a movie that wants to keep you guessing as to whether or not Lawrence’s character is going to sell out her country for America, or whether she’s playing the American spy for Mother Russia. It jerks you around so much that you end up not caring at all. What’s worse, the movie has little in the way of action or suspense set pieces, and with a runtime over two hours, it’s more than a little bit of a grueling slog.

 

Before we even get to all that spy craft, we first have to watch as Lawrence’s Dominika is molded and degraded into becoming a spy in the first place. She is, as the film opens, a prima ballerina for the Bolshoi Ballet – but a horrific injury ends her career. With a dead father, sick mother, and no other job skills – she has no choice but to accept the offer of her Uncle Vanya (Matthias Schoenaerts – it’s been a while since I’ve seen a version of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya so I won’t go delve into why the film felt the need to have such an obvious character name) when he enlists her to do a job for him. He’s a high ranking intelligence officer, and wants to get close to a very rich man – who had eyes for Dominika as a dancer. All she has to do is get close, and get his phone. Things, of course, don’t play out that way – and she’s given another impossible choice – take a bullet in the back of the head, or go to Sparrow School – which she will call (not incorrectly) Whore School – to learn how to seduce anyone. Find their weak spots, and exploit them. She is apparently so good at this that she’s pulled out early to be sent to Budapest.

 

Red Sparrow is an odd movie. In many ways, it feels like an exploitation movie – this is a movie in which Lawrence is raped, tortured, beaten, stripped and engages in consensual sexual activity as well. The film takes itself so seriously though that all these scenes feel cruel. The elements of the film that could have been made into an erotic thriller a la Brian DePalma featuring Lawrence and Edgerton don’t really work either – as talented as both of them as actors, they share almost zero chemistry. The major sex scenes between the two of them is over is about as much time as the one in Lady Bird – that was the joke in Lady Bird, that the teenage boy finished so quickly – I don’t know what it says in Red Sparrow.

 

What almost saves the movie is the supporting cast more than the leads. I’d watch an entire movie about Mary Louise Parker’s character – the Chief of Staff of a US Senator, who is selling sensitive information. She is drunk the entire time, and a hell of a lot of fun, and the entire extended sequence involving her is easily the best in the movie – the one time when the suspense of the film is truly humming at the level it should. Charlotte Rampling also comes and goes too quickly as Matron – the head of Sparrow School, who emotionlessly tells them that “your bodies belong to the state”. Jeremy Irons and Ciaran Hinds show up as well, so you expect them to do more than they do – but are fine when they’re there. I liked Matthias Schoenaerts’ performance as Uncle Vanya as well, even if his character makes little to no sense.

 

The director of the film is Francis Lawrence, who directed Jennifer Lawrence in the last three Hunger Games movies, and the two clearly have a trusting relationship between director and star. Here, though, they don’t really find the right material. The story goes on too long, and because Lawrence (the director) has decided to direct the whole movie in the muted, depressing tones of a cold war spy movie, with none of the excitement, the film just kind of goes through the motions. Lawrence, the actress, really commits to the role (if not the accent, entirely, which comes and goes). There’s just not much here to make it all worthwhile.   

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Movie Review: Mom and Dad

Mom and Dad *** / *****

Directed by: Brian Taylor.

Written by: Brian Taylor.

Starring: Nicolas Cage (Brent Ryan), Selma Blair (Kendall Ryan), Anne Winters (Carly Ryan), Zackary Arthur (Josh Ryan), Robert T. Cunningham (Damon Hall), Olivia Crocicchia (Riley), Lance Henriksen (Mel Ryan), Marilyn Dodds Frank (Barbara Ryan), Samantha Lemole (Jenna). 

 

There is a scene in Mom and Dad in which Nicolas Cage sings the Hokey Pokey, while destroying a pool table with a sledge hammer – and in the timeline of the movie, this is BEFORE he is infected with a strange virus that makes him – and every other parent – want to murder their children – preferably in some brutal and bloody fashion. Mom and Dad is some sort of strange mixture of satire, comedy and horror – and it the movie begins by being way over the top, and then just tries to top itself again and again and again. In Cage, the film found the only actor who could really pull this off. What’s odd about the film – what I think ultimately makes it work – is that every so often the movie does slow down, to show you another side of Cage’s Brent, and his wife Kendall (Selma Blair) – instead of being just a completely over-the-top bloodbath.

 

The film takes a little bit of time setting things up. Brent and Kendall are suburban parents to teenager Carly (Anne Winters) and 10 year old Josh (Zackary Arthur). Like all suburban parents in the movies, they aren’t really that happy – he trudges off to work at a job he doesn’t really like, she is dealing with the fact that her kids don’t need her as much anymore – and her daughter openly insults her. The movie doesn’t waste too much time before some sort of strange outbreak happens – which gives parents the uncontrollable urge to murder their children. Most of the movie happens at the family house – with the kids locked in the basement, and the parents trying inventive ways to get them – and a boyfriend of Carly who gets knocked out repeatedly, but regains consciousness at just the right moments.

 

The film takes more than a few missteps along the way – the biggest may well be in the character of the family maid – an Asian American woman, who is little more than a stereotype, used to add in a little more bloodshed. The film also seems to be hinting at bigger ideas at times, and then backs off to back to the looniness. It mainly works, but there are hints at a better movie than Mom and Dad ultimately ends up being.

 

The film was written and directed by Brian Taylor – one half of the Nelvedine and Taylor duo, whose films include the god-awful Crank films, offensive and violent films in which Jason Statham has to keep his heart rate up or else he’ll die. I hated the Crank films for their nihilism and misogyny – but you do have to admit that the films had energy. He brings that energy to parts of Mom and Dad as well – particularly in the back half of the film, as things spin wildly out of control, and they get some unexpected visitors that bring things up a notch.

 

The reason to see the film is mainly Cage and Blair. Cage can, and will, go wildly over-the-top at all times, and he does so here. But unlike many of his recent films, it works here – there is a reason for it, and the movie requires him to do so. Oddly though, it’s Blair who is more the center of the movie – she’s the one who keeps things grounded. Cage and Blair have a nice chemistry together – particularly in the more serious scenes – like right after Cage destroys that pool table, where the pair of them wonder what exactly happened to their life.

 

Mom and Dad is a demented satire – another look at suburban life, and home empty it can be. It doesn’t really add anything that Hitchcock, Lynch of Solondz hasn’t done – but it’s done it all in such a demented and over-the-top entertaining way that it should become a cult hit – particularly among parents with a black comedic streak. We may not actually want to kill our children, but we all relate to Cage’s final moment here.

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Oscar Reaction

Oscar Reactions

So last night, Oscar season came to an end with the 90^th Annual Ceremony, and it largely played out as expected. I missed a few of my predictions – the biggest being Best Picture, which after two years of playing it safe and getting it wrong, I decided to go with my gut this time – and, of course, got it wrong. Other than that nothing was too shocking (I also missed Documentary and Foreign Film but wasn’t really shocked by either win, and Cinematography, which I like to tell myself I didn’t predict Deakins as not to jinx him). It was a rather anti-climactic end to a season that felt long this year – but not overly bitter.

 

The Winners

Overall, I’m fine with the winners, even if out of the major categories (Picture, Director, Acting and Screenplay) only three of my choices won (Actress and the two writing categories). For Best Picture, I just want to take a second and say that while I was one of the people who hoped that Jordan Peele’s Get Out would come from behind and win, I think we really should acknowledge how strange a choice Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water is here – and how it is far from a safe choice – which throughout the long season, some people have talked themselves into believing. It is, after all, a film about a mute woman who falls in love with – and has sex with – a monster fish man. It is an incredibly personal film for Guillermo Del Toro, which he made on a surprisingly small budget, given how great the film looks. While it does have the 1950s nostalgia that is often popular with older Academy voters – it’s also more clear eyed about the past than most, openly acknowledging the misogyny, racism and homophobia of the era (perhaps that’s all a little too on the nose, but that’s preferable to ignoring it, as many films do). Del Toro is also a director who loves LOVES movies, who is also seems like a genuinely nice, genuinely passionate filmmaker and is ultimately a force for good in films. When I look at the Best Picture winner of any given year, I always like to think of a future “me” out there, who will learn about film history in part by going through Oscar nominees and winners – and if future me gets to The Shape of Water, and starts exploring Del Toro – with films like The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, Blade II and Crimson Peak – I don’t see how that can be an entirely bad thing. It also may help Del Toro to make something even stranger next. So while the film wasn’t my favorite of the year – or of Del Toro’s career – I’m fine with it, and him winning.

 

The same goes for the acting awards, mostly. No, Gary Oldman’s performance in The Darkest Hour is my favorite of the year – or from him – but he has been so good in so many films (Meantime, Sid & Nancy, Prick Up Your Ears, JFK, True Romance, The Professional, The Contender, Hannibal, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and his only other nominated performance, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) and so frequently ignored by awards groups, that I have a hard time getting too upset about him winning when he probably should not have. It makes it even easier considering the other options would be to either give Denzel or Daniel Day-Lewis another Oscar, or to give to one of two newcomers – Daniel Kaluuya or Timothee Chalamet, both of whom would be very worthy – but I’m not sure an Oscar for their breakthrough roles would really be the best for their career.

 

Frances McDormand was my favorite for Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri – so I was happy to see her win – and it’s great that her role is so different from her other Oscar winning role for Fargo 20 years ago. Sure, you can argue for Saorise Ronan – but with 3 nominations by the age of 23 – for three very different movies, she’s well on her way to becoming one of the greats anyway. She’ll win one sooner or later. I do find it a little odd how easy this win for McDormand was though – I would have thought Hawkins or Ronan would have been closer. I would have preferred Dafoe or Harrelson for Supporting Actor – but Sam Rockwell is always a welcome screen presence, he did the best work of his career in the film, and he’s a likable guy – even if you HATE his character, like many do, I don’t think that’s Rockwell’s fault. I have loved Allison Janney since The West Wing – and think she is one of the great actresses working – but I have to say that right up until the end, I was rooting for Laurie Metcalf. Out of all of the acting wins, Janney’s is the most confusing to me – not because she wasn’t great in the film, she really was, and is a deserving winner – but because so many people loved Lady Bird so much, it wasn’t winning anything else, and Metcalf is so great in it.

 

The writing awards went the way they should have – Peele’s Get Out screenplay is so layered and complex, and flat out brilliant I’m glad he won, and it’s hard to argue with the almost 90 year old legend James Ivory finally winning an Oscar (for those of you who skipped the great run of films he and his producer Ismail Merchant and writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala) made in the 1980s and 1990s – dismissing them as typical British costume dramas, the way I did stupidly before watching them – correct that now. A Room with a View, Howard’s End and especially The Remains of the Day are among the best movies of their kind.

 

The rest of the awards were fine – I was happy to see Roger Deakins finally win his richly deserved cinematography Oscar on his 14^th nomination – he deserved it to, even though his brilliant work on Blade Runner 2049 isn’t as good as his work on many other films (like, say, Barton Fink, Fargo, Kundun, The Man Who Wasn’t There, No Country for Old Men, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford or Skyfall) – he’s still a genius, and worthy of winning. I would have preferred a different score winner – even though I love Desplat. I liked that my favorite film of the year – Phantom Thread – didn’t go home empty handed, and liked it even more that the winner was Mark Bridges for costumes, who has worked on every Paul Thomas Anderson film since the beginning. I feel a little bad that the brilliant team of Visual Effects artists on the Planet of the Apes trilogy lost all three times. I really do need see Foreign Language Film Winner A Fantastic Woman now (I was always going to – just hadn’t gotten around to it yet).

 

The Ceremony

For the most part, I think Jimmy Kimmel does a good job hosting. He keeps things fairly low-key, he keeps the show moving quickly, and more of his bits and jokes land than don’t. I wish he’d stop doing the whole “lets introduce movie stars to the normies” thing he’s done two years in a row – but whatever, it’s a small thing. I know some people didn’t like the montages – but I love a good montage, and most of them were good – reminding me of some films I want to rewatch again. I get that people think there were too many, but I’m a sucker for them. The musical performances of the Best Song nominees were mostly fine – although I don’t think the staging of eventual winner Remember Me from Coco did it any favors, and I was a little disappointed that Sufjan Stevens brought so many interesting musicians on stage (especially St. Vincent) and then did nothing with them.

 

Most of the speeches were fine – if rather forgettable. The highlight was clearly Frances McDormand’s speech – who stood there and did exactly what you expected and wanted her to do, and gave a truly rousing and inspiring speech. Rockwell and Janney also reminded me of why I like them so much – so effortlessly charming and funny. Oldman, not so much.

 

#MeToo

After the Golden Globes, where the MeToo movement was front and center, I expected we’d see a tamer show in regards to the MeToo Movement, and we did. Kimmel made one Weinstein joke, but basically when it came up, he talked more about systematic change, which I think is good. The winners basically stayed away from it – other than McDormand. The telecast did have Mira Sorvino, Salma Hayek and Annabella Sciorra on, and I thought that worked fine.

 

There was something weird about it all though, given that during the ceremony Kobe Bryant won an Oscar, as did Oldman – both have accusations in their past, and the pre-show on E! (which I didn’t watch) was hosted by Ryan Seacrest, who is currently facing them. Was it mere lip service, or are we actually seeing real change? Only time will tell.

 

Final Thoughts

I’m glad the Oscar season is over. It’s true, I don’t pay as much attention to the ins and outs of the whole season as much as I used to – but it’s still a LONG season – too long really to spend discussing too few films. There is too much over-analyzing and hot takes out there on all of these things, so it’s always nice when it’s over, and the films can go back to being films, and not horses in a race – and we get a few months off before we get going at it all over again.

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Movie Review: Foxtrot

Foxtrot **** / *****

Directed by: Samuel Maoz.

Written by: Samuel Maoz.

Starring: Lior Ashkenazi (Michael Feldmann), Sarah Adler (Daphna Feldmann), Yonaton Shiray (Jonathan), Yehuda Almagor (Avigdor - Michael's Brother).

 

Foxtrot opens with a knock on the door – on the other side are two military men there to tell Michael (Lior Ashkenazi) that his son has been killed doing his military service. Michael is a successful architect in Israel – a military veteran himself – and yet once he gets the news, he seems to walk through the rest of the first act of the movie in a daze – paralyzed by indecision and fear, unable to figure out just what the hell to do next. Act 1 ends in a shock, and then in act II, the tone of the movie shifts. We are now with Michael’s son Jonathan (Yonaton Shiray) and his unit, who have been assigned a remote roadblock. Not much happens there, there aren’t many cars coming by, and the men are bored. This section is surreal, and more than a little bit funny, as these bored young men cannot quite figure out what they’re doing, or how things ended up so crooked. It’s funny right up to the point when it isn’t anymore.

 

Foxtrot is the second film by Samuel Maoz – coming 8 years after his debut, Lebanon, which was based on his own experiences inside a tank in that war in 1982. In many ways, Foxtrot is a companion piece to Lebanon – Michael is a veteran of the same war, and also haunted by it. He doesn’t suffer from PTSD in the way we would normally expect him to – but he is clearly not being completely up front with everything that happened, and he hasn’t dealt with it. He’s tried instead to become successful, and in doing so, thinks that will just excuse whatever happened in the past – and that if he just doesn’t talk about it, no one will know. He’s wrong.

 

Foxtrot is a more ambitious and better film than his debut – which others liked more than I did (I thought it was fine, but hardly great). Here, Maoz mixes tone very well – the first act is deep and dark, edging, only into its final minutes, into something slightly more absurd. The second act is surreal – a kind of waking dream that turns into a nightmare, complete with dancing, and absurd comedy. Its turn towards tragedy is the mirror image of the one at the end of act one. Maoz isn’t cheating here – but he’s going for something larger. This messed up Israeli family of men incapable of expressing themselves is something larger.

 

The third act of the film is more melancholy than the first two. You can probably guess where the movie is headed in terms of its plot, but it goes there with sensitivity and compassion. The final act is quieter than the first two, and more perhaps more thoughtful – maybe even optimistic, despite the price everyone has paid by that point. It’s really in this act that having an actor like Ashkenazi helps the most, as he’s able to bring a lighter touch to keep this thing from becoming depressing. This is a movie about several generations in Israel – from Holocaust survivors, to modern day Israel soldiers, all of whom are struggling in their own way. The film takes chances, and zigzags throughout – so even if you sense where the plot is going, it’s still fascinating to see it get there. This is a fascinating, bold, funny, tragic movie – and it’s amazing just how Maoz is able to make all those elements cohere together, so that the whole is even better than the sum of its parts.

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Movie Review: Annihilation

Annihilation **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Alex Garland.

Written by: Alex Garland based on the novel by Jeff VanderMeer.

Starring: Natalie Portman (Lena), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Dr. Ventress), Tessa Thompson (Josie Radek), Gina Rodriguez (Anya Thorensen), Tuva Novotny (Cass Sheppard), Oscar Isaac (Kane), Benedict Wong (Lomax), David Gyasi (Daniel).

 

I have been sitting with Alex Garland’s remarkable Annihilation for a couple of days now, trying to figure out how best to review this odd, transfixing film. It has been marketed as a genre film – and that it certainly is – it is definitely science fiction, and there are elements of a horror film as well. But it’s a deeper film than most – one that not only encourages but demands introspection on behalf of the audience. The film’s tone is odd from the outset, and it gets stranger the further along it goes. The story hits the beats we expect it to in this type of a film – when a group of people head out into the unknown wilderness, not sure what they will find, you expect them to be picked off one at a time – but not like this. The ending of the film is odd, transfixing and profound. The fact that this is a film from a major studio, being given a wide release (at least in North America – the rest of the world will get it on Netflix, which is a shame – this film DEMANDS to be seen on a big screen, with the best sound possible) is amazing to me. How many wide release films so beholden to the work of Soviet master Andrei Tarkovsky are there?

 

The film stars Natalie Portman as Lena – a biologist, teaching at Johns Hopkins University, who used to be in the military. Her husband, Kane (Oscar Isaac) still is – but he went on a mission a year ago, and has yet to return. She has heard nothing from or about him, and has been told he was killed on some sort of top secret mission. Then, he shows up at their house one night. There is something very definitely wrong with him – he doesn’t seem himself, and when he starts bleeding into his water glass she calls the ambulance. They don’t end up at the hospital though – but at Area X. This is where Lena learns of the Shimmer – a strange border that looks just like the name implies. The area enclosed in the shimmer keeps growing, and while you can cross the border into it, nothing comes back. Nothing except for Kane, who is now facing almost certain death? The last group to cross was all military men – so the next group is going to be a group of scientists – all women. They are led by Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a psychologist and also include Josie Radek (Tessa Thompson), a physicist, Anya Thorensen (Gina Rodriguez) a paramedic and Cass Sheppard (Tuva Novotny), another scientist. Lena volunteers to go along as well – their goal is the lighthouse where the shimmer started, but to get there they have to go on a long walk, through dense woods, full of god knows what.

 

I don’t really want to discuss much of what happens beyond this point – it is better to experience that for yourself. What I will say is that director Alex Garland does a marvelous job at keeping every moment of the movie unsettling and disorienting. We are clearly on earth here, yet it almost seems like an alien planet – and one moment to the next, anything is possible. Garland metes out information in the film slowly and methodically. The structure of the film involves Lena being interviewed by a man in a biohazard suit, but also contains flashbacks to Lena and Kane’s time before the Shimmer, which do more than just provide backstory. The visuals, and in particular the sound design – with the strangest, most distinctive score in recent years by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury, which contribute to the strange otherworldly tone of the film. What’s also remarkable is how, despite the tone, the actresses all create distinct characters in the film, which keeps things grounded. Cass observes early in the film that every one of them is hiding something – that they have their own, dark reasons for coming into the shimmer – which effects them all in different ways, and changes their perspective.

 

The obvious touchstone here is Tarkovsky’s 1979 masterpiece Stalker (the great podcast The Next Picture Show is doing their duo next week on Stalker and Annihilation – and I don’t think I’ve ever anticipated a podcast more). Tarkovsky’s science fiction films – which also included Solaris (1972) – his best film – are different from most in the genre, as they require us to look inwards, not outwards (Solaris would make a great double bill with Kubrick’s 2001 – they are opposites in many ways).

 

The ending of the film is probably what concerned Paramount the most – what caused them to dump the film into theaters here, and sell it off to Netflix internationally, because they really don’t know what to do with a film like this. It very well may frustrate some viewers – viewers who want to be spoon fed everything, and told what to think, feel and what it all means. I don’t think Annihilation is all that hard to follow, or even interpret – but it certainly demands something on the part of the viewer that some just will not want to give. For those who want something more in their science fiction – something truly unique, Annihilation is a must see. It confirms Garland as one of the most interesting new directors around – following up his great 2015 film Ex Machina (a completely different kind of sci fi film) with something more ambitious, more ambiguous and altogether more remarkable. The film will likely not last long in theaters, but it will be remembered for years to come.

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Oscars - Should Win, Will Win Summary

For those of you didn't want to want my epic post (good call) but still want to know what I think will and should win the Oscars this weekend, here's a quick summary.

Winner Predictions

Best Picture: Get Out

Director: Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water

Lead Actor: Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour

Lead Actress: Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Supporting Actor: Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Supporting Actress: Allison Janney, I, Tonya

Adapted Screenplay: Call Me by Your Name, James Ivory

Original Screenplay: Get Out – Jordan Peele

Animated Feature: Coco

Best Documentary Feature: Faces Places

Best Foreign Language Film: Loveless (Russia)

Cinematography: The Shape of Water, Dan Laustsen

Film Editing: Dunkirk

Sound Editing: Dunkirk

Sound Mixing: Dunkirk

Original Score: The Shape of Water, Alexandre Desplat

Original Song: Coco - Remember Me

Production Design: The Shape of Water 

Costume Design: Phantom Thread

Makeup and Hair: Darkest Hour

Visual Effects: Blade Runner 2049

 

Should Win Summary

Best Picture: Phantom Thread

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, Phantom Thread

Lead Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Thread

Lead Actress: Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Supporting Actor: Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project

Supporting Actress: Lesley Manville, Phantom Thread

Adapted Screenplay: Call Me by Your Name, James Ivory

Original Screenplay: Get Out, Jordan Peele

Animated Feature: Coco

Best Documentary Feature: Faces Places

Best Foreign Language Film: Loveless (Russia)

Cinematography: Blade Runner 2049, Roger Deakins

Film Editing: Baby Driver

Sound Editing: Blade Runner 2049

Sound Mixing: Dunkirk

Original Score: Phantom Thread, Jonny Greenwood

Original Song: Call Me By Your Name - Mystery of Love

Production Design: Blade Runner 2049

Costume Design: Phantom Thread

Makeup and Hair: Darkest Hour

Visual Effects: Blade Runner 2049

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