Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)

After a surprise encounter with Sicario a few months back, I was delighted to learn of an imminent sequel, even without the presence of Emily Blunt and director Denis Villeneuve (the latter of whom gave us Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 in the interim, which I’d say is a fair trade indeed). Here we have Sicario: Day of the Soldado, which many critics are calling an “unexpected” or “unlikely” franchise – though in the age of shared universes, can we really be surprised? And while Villeneuve’s absence is felt, to Soldado’s detriment, it’s only a detriment that exists in hindsight, as Soldado continues to be that curious kind of action film that relies successfully on overtones of dread.

When the United States government (represented by Catherine Keener and Matthew Modine) suspects that Mexican cartels are aiding Islamic terrorists in illegal border crossings, DOJ operative Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) cooks up a scheme with attorney-turned-hitman Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro) to turn the cartels against each other. The plan, as most of Graver’s are, is all sorts of morally ambiguous, leading to violence on both sides of the border when a cartel princess (Isabela Moner) is kidnapped.

The first thing one notices about Soldado in comparison to Sicario is likely the result of Dariusz Wolski replacing Roger Deakins as cinematographer. Deakins, first among his profession, gave us a Sicario with lush color-washed landscapes and dusty interiors. Wolski is capable, though his images are much more washed-out and dusty to the point of being sandy. It is, I would say, the difference between Deakins on Blade Runner 2049 and Wolski on the Pirates of the Caribbean films – one a sprawling epic and the other a poppy genre flick; both engaging and visually appearing in their craft, but one with infinitely more depth (and the other with infinitely more Depp).

This is not to say that Soldado is shallower than Sicario, though it is perhaps less overwhelmingly potent. With the absence of Blunt’s Kate Macer as a moral compass, Brolin and del Toro are untethered, though incoming director Stefano Sollima smartly places that morality debate squarely in the audience’s hands; where Kate Macer might have been on screen to interrogate the wisdom of crossing lines, Sollima and returning scripter Taylor Sheridan find room for those questions between the silences. I think most of us came away from Sicario wanting to see more of what these two men could do, how far they were willing to go, and on that count Soldado is a hearty success. While there is perhaps nothing as shocking as Alejandro’s last-reel dinner incursion in Sicario, there are a number of opportunities when a more unwavering hero would have balked at the choices presented. Moreover, there is a fascinating arc about the relationship between Graver and Alejandro, one that these two silent men of stone would never acknowledge but one which undeniably affects the way they conduct their business.

If there is a difference between Sicario and Soldado which underscores the latter’s inferiority in the face of a latter-day American classic, it’s that Soldado ends with much less finality than its predecessor, punting a fuller conclusion for a Sicario 3 (a real pet peeve of mine). Where Sicario ended with Kate Macer confronted with a full understanding of Alejandro and a simultaneous inability to reckon with the horror of that knowledge, Soldado concludes by revisiting and deepening our sense of just what this man can do, and in that task del Toro is brutally terrifying, cold and dispassionate in pursuit of his own unique goal. That the film expects its audience to remember the translation of “sicario” (hint: “hitman”) to fully grasp the ending may be more my shortcoming than the film’s, but it is almost Empire Strikes Back-ian in its promise that there is at least one more story to be told with these characters.

If I didn’t enjoy Soldado as much as I did up to that point, it might have rankled me more than it actually does. But as compelling as the preceding two hours were, I found myself charmed by the promise of a Sicario 3. Likely none of us expected a Soldado, let alone a third, but this “unlikely” franchise carves a place for itself by filling its world with uncompromisingly gray characters in impossible situations, which escalate into dreadful stakes until the blood runs like a staccato rainfall. You’d think it’d get old, that we’d be numb to the dread and the shock of death, but Soldado finds a rhythm where that danger never fades. For two different directors, absent collaboration, to achieve that same Hitchcockian anticipation of the bang, the franchise that might not have needed to be ends up finding a very good identity for itself in the midst of blockbuster shared universes of much larger scale. (Never mind that Brolin figures prominently into at least three, counting this one.)

Sicario: Day of the Soldado is rated R for “strong violence, bloody images, and language.” Directed by Stefano Sollima. Written by Taylor Sheridan. Starring Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Isabela Moner, Jeffrey Donovan, and Catherine Keener.

Monday at the Movies - March 12, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” Today’s installment is one of those “how’d he miss that?” reviews.

Sicario (2015) – If Denis Villeneuve isn’t already one of my favorite working directors, Sicario ought to cement that reputation. I’ve loved Prisoners and Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, so Sicario fills in a gap with a movie that combines the seat-edge tension of Prisoners with, well, Blade Runner 2049’s fascination with dust. Emily Blunt plays an FBI agent whose safehouse raid goes wrong, leading her to take a new role in the war on drugs alongside two Department of Justice operatives (Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro) who redefine playing their cards close to the chest by keeping her in the dark about their ambiguous, ultra-violent mission. From the film’s opening scene, which takes several brutally unexpected turns, Villeneuve and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan (he of Hell or High Water) keep the audience guessing as Blunt’s Kate Macer tries to find her own footing in a plot that is never quite transparent about its goals. Indeed, for a film that doles out its cards so slowly, it’s almost alchemical how Villeneuve keeps the audience on his side for the duration of the film; he’s helped ably, one should note, by cinematographer Roger Deakins, who has been the cinematographer for many of the most gorgeous films of the last twenty years (favorites: Skyfall and No Country for Old Men, whose visual influence is acute here). Points also to Benicio del Toro, who gives a riveting, largely silent performance as Alejandro, the man who “If he says to do somethin’, just do it” – and you buy it from del Toro’s quiet intensity. Hours after watching Sicario, I was elated to learn that there’s a sequel, Soldado, due in June of this year. And as a moviegoer, I don’t know if there’s a better feeling than discovering a delight you’d missed along your way, only to be told that there’s more coming just around the corner.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

No one, it seems, hates Star Wars as much as Star Wars fans. To be fair, we’ve been wronged by the franchise we profess to love – the much-maligned Prequel Trilogies are cumbersome and inelegant, and the less said about the “Holiday Special” the better – but I think by and large the fanbase has been spoiled by a profusion of content and thus has developed a very narrow view of what Star Wars ought to be. The Last Jedi, the eighth episode in a franchise that now also includes “Anthology Films,” flies in the face of that narrow vision of Star Wars and does something truly unique with the franchise while remaining (to borrow a phrase from its composer, John Williams) quintessentially Star Wars-ian.

(As ever, you can trust me to give you the spoiler-free treatment. Believe me when I tell you that the plot summary below is only half of the first act, but if you haven’t seen it and want to go in totally unspoiled, skip down to the last paragraph, and don’t listen to the soundtrack, because Williams is not shy about quoting identifiable cues.)

The Force having awakened in the previous film, The Last Jedi picks up moments later, as Rey (Daisy Ridley) encounters Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) in his self-imposed, grimly pessimistic exile. While Rey implores Luke to rejoin the galaxy and teach her the ways of the Force, Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) leads the Resistance in evacuating their D’Qar base; Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) butts heads with Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern); and defector Finn (John Boyega) joins up with mechanic Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) to seek out a way to keep the First Order off their tail. And speaking of the film’s villains, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is dispatched by the Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) to snuff out the Resistance, the Jedi Order, and his own demons.

The Last Jedi covers a lot of ground, and it’s been rightly compared to The Empire Strikes Back for its divergent plot structure. Where The Force Awakens was relentlessly linear and unilaterally focused on a tight narrative, The Last Jedi sprawls out on this galactic tapestry and gives us no shortage of plots to follow. Like in Empire, the plots splinter off and converge in unexpected ways, and the audience is never quite sure what’s going to happen. I’ve seen a lot of outlets that report the film doesn’t “play it safe” and “takes risks” with the franchise – there is a moment, about halfway through the film, at which point I realized I had no idea what was going to happen because something I’d taken for granted had changed completely. After that, I found myself trying to keep up with the film as it heroically outpaced my expectations. As we galloped into the third act, I found myself quite literally gasping for air; I’d forgotten to breathe, and it took an unexpected shock to jar me back to life.

There’s not a bad performance in the bunch, and to say more might encroach on the territory of spoilers. Daisy Ridley gives a fantastically driven performance as a woman who is finally running toward her destiny, while Adam Driver is magnetic as he wrestles with the legacies he’s being forced to inherit. Far and away, the film belongs to Mark Hamill, who’s given a meaty character arc once Rey holds out that lightsaber on the island of Ahch-To, but Carrie Fisher gives a hell of a swan song as General Leia, who looms over the film like the regal war hero we know her to be. Then there’s the trio of new faces, of whom Kelly Marie Tran is the most engaging and likely a new fan favorite as she presents a giddy new look at what it means to be a hero of the Resistance from the vantage point of the mechanic Rose Tico; Laura Dern and Benicio del Toro turn in compelling performances, too, and all three of them are examples of what Star Wars has done best – introduce us to slices of a character’s life and invite us to study further into that galaxy far, far away. For The Last Jedi is, like all of the Star Wars universe, a story about the personal stakes of good and evil, about a series of individual choices that add up to galactic mythology because every life is precious, every moment sacred, every interaction blessed by significance because each life exists in its own expanded universe of stories. (Rose has her own tie-in book; Holdo appears in an earlier novel about Leia; and del Toro’s DJ has his own comic book coming soon – crass consumerism it may be, but sign me up for the lot of it.)

By way of critique, I’ll say that there are a few moments in the movie that don’t quite feel like Star Wars to me – new abilities we see on display, new technologies, even incidental characters who feel as if they’ve been imported from another franchise. Where some have taken this with resentment, #NotMyStarWars, I’m in the camp where those plot devices feel like fresh angles on a franchise that had already recapped its greatest hits with The Force Awakens and, to an extent, Rogue One. The tone of the film does, however, occasionally flirt with the line between deflating comedy and moments of high drama; where Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 tripped headlong over its own shoes into a pratfall in its best effort to prevent us from engaging with an emotion beyond laughter, The Last Jedi uses these moments to show us that a person is never only one thing. Someone mired in the deepest depression can find an opportunity for levity; life-or-death stakes end up blinking when they stare us down and we shrug our shoulders as if to say, “Do your worst.”

Surprisingly, I didn’t cry at this one. I still get a little choked up at the reunion of Han and Leia in The Force Awakens – kudos to John Williams, who did nonpareil work there and who continues to live up to his own legend. (Thank goodness, by the way, the “Canto Bight” theme is on the soundtrack!) I did, however, feel a swell of admiration at a film that managed to defy my expectations and yet make a perfect amount of sense. There may have been a few things I would have done ever so slightly differently, but of what movie isn’t that true? At film’s end, I felt thrilled, breathless, captivated. Though it’s the longest entry in the franchise, I could have easily done another hour. We’ve got two years until the as-yet-untitled Episode IX, but director Rian Johnson has given us a lot to pore over, and I can’t wait to see it again. Moreover, my excitement for the future of the franchise is stratospheric, because this all could have gone horribly wrong. The galaxy is in good hands, and there’s room for hope.

The Last Jedi is rated PG-13 for “sequences of sci-fi action and violence.” Written and directed by Rian Johnson. Starring Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Gwendoline Christie, Kelly Marie Tran, Laura Dern, and Benicio del Toro.

Inherent Vice (2014)

Since the debut of the Thomas Pynchon book on which the film is based, Inherent Vice has invited the admittedly somewhat clever pun “Incoherent Vice.”  What this appellation suggests, however, is that incoherence itself is incapable of being a virtue, a distinction I don’t think is fair to a film like this.  While I can’t yet vouch for the rewatch value, I found myself more than spellbound for the ride, regardless of its coherence.

Joaquin Phoenix stars as Doc Sportello, a drug-addled private detective out to thwart his ex-girlfriend’s lover’s wife’s lover’s kidnapping plot.  Only it might not be a kidnapping at all?  It might be a real estate scheme, a government brainwashing trip, a narcotics underworld power grab, or maybe – just maybe – all in Doc’s head.

For those who don’t know Pynchon, Inherent Vice feels very much like The Big Lebowski, which is quite a high compliment coming from someone who’s only a mouse-click away from ordaining himself in the Church of Dudeism.  Taking a page from the slacker noir gospel of the Coen Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson gives us that same bewildering sense that grand mysterious proceedings are afoot, if only our narrative guide were sober enough to perceive them. Indeed, Doc Sportello spends significant moments in stoned unconsciousness or blunt trauma-induced comas, trudging through the case compelled more by genre than by duty.

Throughout, a stellar ensemble cast drifts in orbit around Doc.  Where Anderson had recently proven himself with small-cast character studies like the riveting The Master and the incomparable There Will Be Blood, Inherent Vice demonstrates his dexterity with multiple moving parts.  A-listers like Josh Brolin, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio del Toro are here, as are comparative newcomers like Katherine Waterston as Doc’s ex.  Brolin in particular, in a role somewhat analogous to John Goodman’s in Lebowski, plays the heck out of a blustering cop with aspirations to act amid his own crisis of masculinity – the “motto panukeiku” scene, eliciting laughs as it does, also layers on a deep understanding of the character when Brolin reveals he comes to that particular restaurant “for the respect.”

For those familiar with Pynchon, though, Anderson captures quintessentially the novelist’s depiction of the experience of incomprehensibility, the disorienting sensory overload in postmodern America and the struggle to find meaning therein.  Viewers who report themselves feeling alienated may, I feel, have missed the point.  Inherent Vice is not the sort of film in which you can find yourself in one of the characters; this is a film not to be experienced but to be perceived, to be (dare I say it?) overwhelmed by.

Inherent Vice is delightfully overwhelming, if a bit overlong near the end of the film, but Anderson is a filmmaker who’s proven himself well enough to earn my playing-along for 148 minutes.  It is not the kind of film that will be embraced by everyone, but those of us who enjoy a bit of quirky surrealism starring some top-notch performers are in for something of a treat.

Inherent Vice is rated R for “drug use throughout, sexual content, graphic nudity, language and some violence.”  Nearly every scene involves at least one illegal substance being abused, as well as dialogue littered with obscene dialogue of one variety or the other.  In one extended scene, a woman is seen fully nude while delivering what might be important expository dialogue, while a few other sequences involve fistfights and gunfire.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

Has a Terry Gilliam movie ever made complete sense to anyone? Probably not, but I think we can all agree they're at least intriguing when it comes to visual spectacle.

Gilliam's 1998 adaptation of the famous novel by Hunter S. Thompson is an optical tour de force, as close to an actual acid trip as one could come without skirting legal boundaries. Johnny Depp is Raoul Duke, Thompson's fictitious alter ego, assigned to cover motorcycle races and "dangers of drugs" conventions in Las Vegas. Duke brings along his questionable lawyer Dr. Gonzo (an off-the-wall Benicio del Toro) and a suitcase full of every controlled (and potentially uncontrollable) substance known to man. The results are, shall we say, mind-blowing.

Both Depp and del Toro turn in career-capping performances, among the best in both their respective canons. Depp is spot on as Raoul Duke, mastering every one of the little quirks - the walk, the talk, the hair - that make Hunter S. Thompson such an identifiable figure in American culture. And del Toro is so far out there that you'll wonder how much of that is acting and how much of that is "method" acting; the fact that Dr. Gonzo is often brandishing a deadly weapon doesn't hurt. There are fun cameos from Cameron Diaz, Gary Busey, Christina Ricci, Penn Jillette, and Gregory Itzin along the way, but the show belongs to Depp and del Toro all the way.

Of course, the film has a third star - the eye-popping visuals. Since much of the film finds its two protagonists on one bender or another, the look of the film is extremely important to capturing this mood. Fortunately, trippy and surreal imagery has never been a particular weakness of Gilliam's; between the brutally slanted camera angles, the dramatically off-kilter lighting, and the oddball props and lizard costumes that appear at random, the film is as unsettling as it is riveting.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, then, is a little like Barton Fink - it doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense, but it's gripping in a way that it shouldn't be. A film this nonsensical, this non sequitur, this irrational, shouldn't be as interesting as Gilliam and his acting crew make it. It's incoherent, sure, but it's a lot of fun! Nothing happens for vast periods of time, and while this complete lack of plot, exposition, or even substance can be a little irritating, it's nonetheless something from which you can't tear yourself away.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas got the gift of an "R for pervasive extreme drug use and related bizarre behavior, strong language, and brief nudity" from the MPAA. Drugs and their side-effects are in every scene of the movie, as is pretty harsh language. I don't remember nudity at all.