Oppenheimer (2023)

Last week was the fifteenth anniversary of The Dark Knight. It was a seismic and seminal moment in blockbuster cinema, a sort of coming-of-age for me as a filmgoer and for superhero cinema writ large. It was the movie that made comic book movies a billion-dollar business, and after a decade and a half it hasn’t lost a step. But it also made Christopher Nolan a household name – no mean feat for a director to become ostensibly the auteur star of his own show.
 
Oppenheimer is Nolan’s sixth film since The Dark Knight, which is (for better or worse) the North Star for his entire career. I think you’d be hard-pressed to say that The Dark Knight isn’t still his best film, a perfect diamond absolute of a film, but Oppenheimer is in a way his most ambitious since, precisely because it’s Nolan without his characteristic science-fictional flair, his high concept effects wizardry. It’s still got all his stylistic quirks and puzzle-box structure, but for a director who has been criticized for being impersonal and unemotional, Oppenheimer is a riveting three-hour character study of one of history’s greatest enigmas.
 
Cillian Murphy stars as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of American quantum physics and director of the Manhattan Project, which yielded the world’s first atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Nolan’s intricate approach to the biopic catches three distinct moments in Oppenheimer’s life – his path to Los Alamos, his 1954 security clearance investigation, and a 1959 Senate confirmation hearing for Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey, Jr.), an American bureaucrat who frequently butted heads with Oppenheimer.
 
Nolan has cited Oppenheimer as “the most important person who ever lived,” which – coming from one of the most important directors who ever lived – is high praise and certainly fair justification for the man who created Inception to turn his camera toward one particular scientific genius. Nolan has become one of those directors whose decisions (and films) may seem initially inscrutable, but like any good magician (cf. The Prestige) Nolan has a way of hiding his endgame in plain sight, only revealing his purpose at the moment when it best suits him. There are many moments in Oppenheimer that take one’s breath away – the Trinity bomb test certainly is orchestrated that way – but the film’s final exchange of dialogue recontextualizes the film by delivering Nolan’s ultimate thesis.
 
Nolan is both academic and prestidigitarian, technician and artisan, but what’s somewhat surprising about Oppenheimer is the example it sets of Nolan as a friend – of humanity, sure, but of his entire cast of players. Cillian Murphy has been a veteran of Nolan’s company since 2005’s Batman Begins, but his turn as Oppenheimer is a gift any performer would be envious to receive: three hours of, more or less, a one-man show about a living cipher, a man who embodied contradictions and challenged binaries, insisting all the while on neutrality and unreadability. Even his greatest triumph, the creation of the bomb, cannot be rendered in anything but code, as when he tells his wife over the telephone, “Bring the sheets in.”
 
As his wife, one of the two unwieldy women in his life, Emily Blunt is another performer treated by Nolan with kindness and grace. While the film is nominally her husband’s, Kitty Oppenheimer is given her own moments to shine, her own room to be her complicated self, petty yet resilient, sturdy and yet agreeing with her husband that they are “awful selfish people.” Blunt can do plenty with a steely look, particularly in two impactful sequences late in the film, but she can equally channel that quiet nerve into an explosion of emotion. Meanwhile, Florence Pugh is heartbreaking as Oppenheimer’s mistress Jean Tatlock, unable to articulate her own desires or her needs from a man who is himself less than forthcoming. Pugh is arguably one of our preeminent scene stealers; case in point, she was the only ray of sunshine in the paint-by-numbers Black Widow, though her work in fare like Midsommar proves she’s equally gifted as a lead performer.
 
And speaking of Marvel performers, Robert Downey Jr. is already being fitted for a Best Supporting Oscar for his monochromatic antagonist Lewis Strauss. For those of us who are used to Downey as the flawed-yet-saintly Tony Stark, his turn as Strauss is a reminder of how versatile he can be. Strauss is instantly dislikeable, vindictive and self-righteous, and Downey creates an all-time classic screen villain. I can’t recall ever seeing a Downey character as loathsome as this one, but I certainly hope it’s not the last time he plays the heel, because it’s equally apparent that he is having a ball interpreting Strauss’s version of the story.
 
I did not join with so many of my fellow moviegoers in partaking of the “Barbenheimer” double feature. Truth be told, I was enervated after three hours of Oppenheimer. Not that the film was overlong and stupefying – quite the opposite. The cast is chock full of characters, some of whom are played by quite famous faces in surprisingly small roles, but each of them adds something quite special and unique to the stew. (Shout-out to Gary Oldman in one scene as Harry S. Truman.) But in telling a story out of sequence, as Nolan is wont to do, he takes the audience on a scenic tour through one man’s life, which as it turns out might well be the fulcrum point of human history. But Nolan’s method of delivery is not unlike an atomic bomb itself – a bright flash of light, followed by a roaring shockwave of impact. If you let out a breath as the credits rolled, as I did, it would have been one of recognition, of understanding. And before you draw air again, you’ll have to reckon with a sobering proposition that followed Oppenheimer all his life. And that, dear readers, is the most amazing magic trick of all – that Nolan created a biopic with a surprise ending, an interpretive twist that shouldn’t be spoiled.
 

Oppenheimer is rated R for “some sexuality, nudity, and language.” Written and directed by Christopher Nolan. Based on the book American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Starring Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, and Kenneth Branagh.

Jungle Cruise (2021)

If you were to take a blend of things that I specifically enjoy – Humphrey Bogart, movies based on theme park rides, The Mummy, dad jokes, Pirates of the Caribbean – you might end up with a movie like Jungle Cruise. However, in this case, the sum of the parts is so much more than the whole, with a film that ends up feeling noted to death and assembled by committee. Jungle Cruise is never quite terrible, but it docks somewhere south of watchable.

In search of a mythical flower that will end human suffering, Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) defies contemporary skepticism and commissions the sardonic skipper Frank Wolff (Dwayne Johnson) to ferry her and her brother (Jack Whitehall) up the Amazon River. Along the way, the trio is pursued by a cursed Spanish conquistador (Édgar Ramirez), a maniacal German prince (Jesse Plemons), and a harbormaster (Paul Giamatti) to whom Frank is deeply in debt.

 

At some point in Jungle Cruise – and this moment will vary for moviegoers – you’ll be reminded of a better movie that you’d rather be watching. Perhaps it’s early on, when the film’s opening flashback sequence and initial historical setting remind you of the structure of Stephen Sommers’s masterful Mummy. Perhaps you’ll pick up on the Bogart-esque performance of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (which is actually somewhat decent, inflected as it is by, above all, The African Queen). Or perhaps it’s the film’s second half, with cursed zombie conquistadors who seem airlifted from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Or maybe, just maybe, you’ll find yourself recognizing some of Frank Wolff’s deliberately bad jokes and wish that you were on the Jungle Cruise ride proper. At any rate, it is impossible to watch Jungle Cruise and think this is the best version of any of its disparate parts. 

 

Despite drawing on such a wealth of source material and creative influences, Jungle Cruise all too often feels like it’s pulling its punches. The key, for example, to why the corny jokes work so well on the ride is because the skippers believe in the punchline and deliver it with a knowing wink. Here, Johnson seems to want to remain above the jokes, delivering them deadpan but almost begrudgingly, knowing yet not really caring that some true believers want to hear about “the backside of water.” Ditto the winks to Albert Falls and Trader Sam, legendary figures in Disney Parks lore but almost inconsequential easter eggs here. Where Johnson cuts a passable Bogart for about half the film, Emily Blunt is a disappointing remix of Rachel Weisz’s Evelyn Carnahan from The Mummy, lacking the charm and wit in favor of a corporately cynical “girlboss” attitude. And as seriously as the film takes itself, it’s continually deflated by the fact that no one can pronounce the Spanish word “lágrimas” correctly. (It’s got an accent mark for a reason.)

 

While the first half of the film is essentially a theme park remake of The African Queen, peppered with enough inside references to keep fans from walking out, the second half is a disappointing retread of the Pirates movies. Édgar Ramirez and his crew of conquistadors seem airlifted from the disparate ghost zombie crews of Hector Barbossa, Davy Jones, and Armando Salazar. Some of these phantasms are merged with plant life, others with insects or snakes, to the point where they may as well be leftover CGI creations that weren’t used in the final cuts of the Pirates films. I don’t know quite how you make a narrative film out of a plotless ride like Jungle Cruise – perhaps focusing more on the Jungle Navigation Co. or on Albert Awol (if you know, you know) – but I don’t think that cribbing the successful Pirates formula is the most satisfying way to go.

 

If the plot feels like it’s grafted together from impressions of its predecessors, the cast certainly all feel like they’re starring in different movies. Johnson is somewhat slick but never quite breaks free of his own star persona; if he’d committed to the Bogart of it all, or embraced the hammy humor, it could have been a breakout franchise performer like Johnny Depp’s impossibly popular Captain Jack Sparrow. Blunt too seems bored by most of the film, trying not to overdo the stuffy bluster but never quite landing anywhere. Then there are the three strangest performances in the film – Jack Whitehall as Lily’s brother, Jesse Plemons as Prince Joachim of Prussia (a real person, mind you), and Paul Giamatti as a dock owner who seems to have wandered in from a Saturday Night Live skit. Whitehall plays MacGregor extremely broadly, accessing a Forrest Gump level of caricature, even as the film only winks and nods in the direction of his sexuality. Plemons is clearly having arch fun as a Germanic villain, but he’s so transcendently unreal that one loses focus on the film every time he appears. (This performance was but an appetizer for the sheer historical stupidity on display later that year in The King’s Man.)

 

Then there’s Paul Giamatti, who seems to understand how silly the film is and so brings the right level of ham to his performance. Yet no one else in the film is operating at his level, which makes him look more like a cartoon character than the computer-generated jaguar that prowls around the film. Particularly as a gifted character performer in the vein of, say, the Universal monster films, Giamatti shines a light on just how incongruous Jungle Cruise manages to be, a collection of parts and bits from five different writers who never seem to be on the same page. Indeed, just about the only thing in the movie that works is a mid-film twist that I genuinely did not see coming, yet this shift in the plot ends up veering the film into another strange and unexpected direction. Perhaps Jungle Cruise is like the Amazon River itself, swirling and winding in unpredictable ways, with too many voices arguing over how best to navigate it. 

 

Jungle Cruise is rated PG-13 for “sequences of adventure violence.” Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. Written by Michael Green, Glenn Ficarra, John Requa, John Norville, and Josh Goldstein. Starring Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Édgar Ramirez, Jack Whitehall, Jesse Plemons, and Paul Giamatti.

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!

The Girl on the Train (2016)

It’s impossible not to compare The Girl on the Train to 2014’s Gone Girl (or, in the world of the not-cinematic, to compare the two source novels by Paula Hawkins and Gillian Flynn, respectively). Both are wildly successful novels by women novelists, texts about missing and presumed murdered women, told by unreliable narrators with the spotlight of suspicion cast on nearly every character. They’re page-turners, and they’re both told with a competence that one might not expect from a narrative which might otherwise be fare for a Lifetime Original Movie.

In any other context, Tate Taylor’s adaptation of The Girl on the Train would be a runaway hit. And perhaps it is unfair to compare The Girl on the Train to Gone Girl, but it is to my eyes unavoidable and Tate Taylor isn’t David Fincher, and so Train becomes a distant second. It doesn’t do anything wrong aside from not being Gone Girl, which – when the comparison is so strongly invited – ends up a bit of a dark shadow.

Emily Blunt stars as the eponymous girl, Rachel Watson, an unreliable narrator if ever we’ve seen one. Amid a fog of mass transportation, substance abuse, and her own internal brokenness, Rachel thinks she observes the key piece of evidence in the disappearance of Megan Hipwell (Haley Bennett). Complicating matters, though, Megan lives a few doors down from Rachel’s ex-husband and his new wife (Justin Theroux and Rebecca Ferguson), who suspect that Rachel’s escalating derangement poses a danger to their family and to Megan’s.

First of all, Emily Blunt gives a commanding performance as Rachel. Fans of the book will not be disappointed by her interpretation of the character, which is compelling in its unflinching precision in depicting her battle with alcoholism, her dispiriting recidivism, and those moments where book-readers will recall wanting to shake the poor woman by the shoulders and implore her to come to her senses. Indeed, I almost wonder if Blunt will end up filling out a lot of Best Actress lists come December. Ferguson and especially Bennett do good work too, the latter displaying a range I wouldn’t have expected after last month’s Magnificent Seven outing; as Megan’s psychology is unveiled in the film, Bennett keeps strong pace with the character, such that a pivotal water drop in the film’s third act becomes intensely significant and vividly understandable.

As I said above, though, Tate Taylor isn’t David Fincher, and so Girl on the Train simmers with these strong performances rather than Fincher’s film, which positively crackles with its kinetic energy. Setting aside the similarities in plot, both films use voiceover narration (which I usually deplore), Train doing so less effectively than Gone Girl, but I would give points to Train for finding ways to communicate visually the unreliability of Rachel as a point-of-view character which the novel expressed in its narration. Even Danny Elfman seems to be doing his best Trent Reznor impression on score duty.

There are moments, then, when I don’t feel the comparison to Gone Girl is unfair, because it does seem at times that Taylor is aspiring in the direction of David Fincher. Points in favor of Taylor (and Hawkins) – the film passes the Bechdel Test with far more grace than Gone Girl ever did. It’s surprisingly loyal to the book and very successful as a page-to-screen adaptation, but what Girl on the Train doesn’t do is transcend the Lifetime ethos with the fluidity of Gone Girl, nor do I expect Train to remain as rewatchable as Gone Girl. The Girl on the Train is very good at what it does, but what it doesn’t do is end up as essential as Gone Girl.

The Girl on the Train is rated R for “violence, sexual content, language and nudity.” Directed by Tate Taylor. Written by Erin Cressida Wilson. Based on the novel by Paula Hawkins. Starring Emily Blunt, Rebecca Ferguson, Haley Bennett, Justin Theroux, and Luke Evans.

Into the Woods (2014)

I had so desperately wanted to begin this review with the fabulous line given to Little Red Riding Hood:  “Nice is different than good.”  Unfortunately for the sake of the pun, Into the Woods is both nice and good, a fine close to what has been another good year for Disney and perhaps the more sober alternative to the relentless cheeriness of the nation’s current Frozen mania.

The film’s opener sets the stage best:  “Once upon a time in a far-off kingdom there lay a small village at the edge of the woods, and in this village lived a young maiden (Anna Kendrick as Cinderella), a carefree young lad (Daniel Huttlestone as the bean-stalked Jack), and a childless baker (James Corden) with his wife (Emily Blunt).”  The curse of a witch (Meryl Streep) sets these characters into a quest through the woods, where they cross paths with Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford), a pair of narcissistic princes (Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen), and a Big Bad Wolf (Johnny Depp).

As someone unfamiliar with the stage play – and deliberately so, in order to take the film on its own terms – I can’t help but see Into the Woods as another fabulous step forward for Disney in its current phase of self-reflexive reinvention.  Those who don’t know the play might be surprised, as I was, by the film’s clever fake-out climax which delivers the “happily ever after” about forty minutes too early and then dissects just how untenable that ending would have been – warts, discontents, and unfinished business.  It’s smart stuff, the kind of revisionist fairy tale that we’re seeing played out in stuff like the Fables comics and, more closely to Into the Woods, the true-love fallacies of Frozen and Brave.

As for the lyrical elephant in the room, Stephen Sondheim’s trademark syncopated style of “talk singing” isn’t for everyone, and even folks who liked Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd adaptation from a few years back will find Into the Woods somewhat less melodic, governed more by motifs than catchy tunes.  For me, I liked the music enough to go out in search of the soundtrack, if only for the tour de force “Prologue,” a fifteen-minute introduction to all the characters and major plots that also gives us the whimsical eponymous chorus “Into the woods / It’s time to go...”

I like the music, but I’m sure it’s because the performers are all quite charismatic.  I can’t think of many actresses who could sell a line like “I caught him in the autumn in my garden one night!” – but, as the oft-quoted line from Modern Family goes, “Meryl Streep could play Batman and be the right choice.”  Streep, who did Mamma Mia! with more class than anyone expected, lends the Witch an equal dose of class, and she does wonders with the maternal scenes with Rapunzel as well as absolutely killing it in the witchier bits.  I honestly don’t have a bad word about any of the aforementioned cast, although I’ll throw in the two-cents that I really could have used more Johnny Depp.  Touted as a centerpiece of the ensemble cast, Depp only appears for about five minutes – which are captivating, don’t get me wrong, with his vaguely pedophilic Wolf devouring scenery and children in one fell gulp.

I think the reason I fell so fast in love with Into the Woods, aside from the equally captive audience sharing the theater with me, is that the characters are very well-crafted and – tragically, a rarity these days – eminently likeable.  Everyone, from the Baker and his wife to Red Riding Hood, has a story arc, compelling motivations, and at least one ingenious turn of phrase (either by smart rhyme or admirable manipulation of rhythm).  When things don’t go well for them, the audience feels it; when the characters triumph, we feel it even more.  This is a musical adaptation that remembers those of us who don’t already love the story, so director Rob Marshall works extra hard to get all of us swept away by the once-upon-a-times.

And while I’m on the subject of the captive audience, Into the Woods is an effortless crowd pleaser, even amid a somewhat gloomy ending.  There’s something for everyone in here, plenty of year-end spectacle and spectacular performances:  “It Takes Two” is a catchy and slyly romantic duet, where “Agony” is the musical number that’ll elicit the most laughs as the Princes compare male-privilege sorrows.  Into the Woods manages to be self-reflexive without being overtly cynical – “Careful the tale you tell” seems to be the moral of this story, and it’s evident that the filmmakers have been very careful indeed.  What more can I say?  I had an infectiously good time, escapism layered with enough narrative criticality not to feel like a brain-drain.  I’d happily go back into the woods once more.

Into the Woods is rated PG for “thematic elements, fantasy action and peril, and some suggestive material.”  There’s fairy-tale discussion of curses and creatures, though the film darkens considerably in the second half when a giantess walks the earth and several characters die in emotionally-charged sequences.  The Wolf is played as a metaphor for sexual awakening with pedophilic overtones, while the Prince’s philandering ways lead to serious questions about seduction and fidelity.  All told, though, this is no less appropriate than most of, say, Disney’s late-90s offerings.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Edge of Tomorrow is literally Groundhog Day with space aliens; more accurately, it’s Groundhog Day meets Aliens, right down to the inclusion of Bill Paxton and a kickass female lead in a robotic suit.  It’s a fine popcorn film, engaging without any real dead spots and bankable in the best Tom Cruise tradition.

Cruise stars as Major Bill Cage, a military spokesman who is shanghaied into service on the front lines of a conflict between humanity and the invading “Mimic” aliens.  His first day of combat goes disastrously, but his newfound ability to “reset the day” and travel back in time brings him to legendary soldier Rita Vrtaski (Emily Blunt), who trains him to become a better fighter and take advantage of his time traveling powers to end the war.

Regardless of what one makes of Tom Cruise personally, the man is one of Hollywood’s more reliable action heroes.  His recent work has been consistently entertaining, due in large part to his charismatic on-screen personality.  Here that quintessential Cruise persona gets inverted a bit; when we first meet Cage, he is essentially a deserter, more at home selling a war than fighting it.  Cruise plays these early scenes very well, and he does a comparably good job with Cage’s transformation into a battle-hardened soldier.

In some ways, though, he’s still playing a version of Tom Cruise.  Don’t get me wrong – I very much like that character (he was plenty of fun in the underrated Jack Reacher), but it’s not really news.  What Edge of Tomorrow does give us that we haven’t seen a dozen times before is the commanding performance of Emily Blunt as the “Angel of Verdun.”  It’s a performance that does recall Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, especially with the mechanical exoskeleton iconography.  It’s not, however, a metaphor for her own resilience as was the case in Aliens; instead, Blunt humanizes Rita and saves her from the worst fate of all – the stereotypical romantic subplot.  And honestly, thank God – where Groundhog Day relegated Andie MacDowell (also playing a Rita – coincidence?) to the object of Bill Murray’s desire, Edge of Tomorrow flips that and gives us a hard-as-nails woman who is uninterested in Cruise’s amorous affection for her.  It helps that she’s incredibly immersed in the role, which could make its own successful feature in and of itself.

The film is surprisingly funny, which will definitely bring up those Groundhog Day vibes, and it’s to director Doug Liman’s credit that the film never feels uneven in that regard.  What holds it back from being a truly great film and restricts it to the province of popcorn blockbuster is that a lot of the film does feel somewhat undercooked.  We have two very compelling protagonists, but the villains are a bit underdeveloped; aside from a neat and original look, they’re really only there to fill the antagonist quota.  We don’t know what they want or why they’re on earth, which wouldn’t be too bad except for the fact that the film reminds us a few times that these questions are lingering.

Similarly, the members of J Squad (the military troop into which Cruise is drafted) aren’t very well crafted, functioning mostly as bodies when in combat and comic relief when not.  There’s value in comedy in the midst of a war film – see above for the unexpected humor in the film – but there are a few jokes that don’t feel earned and especially a few deaths in the supporting cast that never quite resonate because a) you’ve seen them die plenty of times before in rejected timelines, and b) you have to remind yourself, “Okay, they said he died, but which one was he again?”

All of this is not to say that Edge of Tomorrow is a bad film.  It’s at worst serviceable and at best a fun and entertaining flick that does enough things right to justify its own existence.  If I had to do it over again, I would.

Edge of Tomorrow is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, language and brief suggestive material.”  There are a lot of military combat sequences between armored humans and tentacled alien monsters, though they’re closer to the frenetic shaky-cam of video games than the brutal gore of Saving Private Ryan.  We see one bare bottom, Tom Cruise gets a rather funny three-quarters of an F-bomb, and a suggestive pick-up line (more of a shrug, really) is quickly and mercifully defused.

Check back on Thursday when The Cinema King assesses The Fault in Our Stars!

Looper (2012)

I don’t want to say that the current interest in sci-fi cinema is due entirely to 2010’s Inception, but I do think that audiences are more open to high concepts thanks to Christopher Nolan’s dreamy mind-bender.  The latest such offering, Rian Johnson’s Looper, is an engaging examination of free will in a soup of time travel.

Set in the year 2044, Looper stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Joe, an assassin for the mob.  Known as a looper, Joe kills targets sent back in time from 2074, but when it’s his future self (Bruce Willis) staring down the barrel of his own gun Joe has to make a difficult choice.  Joe’s pursuit of Old Joe leads him to a farmer (Emily Blunt) and her son, who may or may not be the future’s most dangerous man – and Old Joe’s next target.

Looper is certainly one of the better post-Inception science-fiction films; it’s far and away better than the disappointing Justin Timberlake vehicle In Time, and it’s less gimmicky than the still-fantastic Chronicle.  It’s also more accessible than Inception, requiring fewer of the mental calisthenics that made the earlier film such a hit.  It’s a smart choice, though, allowing Johnson to focus on the story rather than the mechanics of time travel; films like 12 Monkeys (also starring Willis) got bogged down in what wasn’t possible and why, but Looper wisely allows the story to run unfettered.

Though liberated from wibbly-wobbly time travel technicalities, Looper has plenty of fun with its main “rule,” that anything that happens to the past self happens to the future self.  The special effects here are neat and fresh, playing with paradox without burdening the viewer with working it all out.  That’s not, however, to accuse the film of not being “smart enough.”  There are very clever moments that examine how choice affects the future, but it’s less challenging than Inception.

Aside from the high sci-fi, the film’s biggest attraction is the smart casting of JGL and Willis.  It’s an unlikely pairing, perhaps, one usually skirted in such films by double-casting the same actor, but it works here.  The make-up effects are uncanny, bulking up JGL’s jaw, but while Willis essentially plays himself one more time JGL does a lot of good work to imitate Willis and make the transition less jarring.  And it’s always a delight to see Emily Blunt in a major film; has she arrived yet, or do we have to wait for those Avengers 2 rumors to pan out?

And let’s not overlook what might be the best performance in the film – the young Pierce Gagnon as Cid, Old Joe’s target.  Without spoiling too much of the fun surrounding the character, Gagnon turns in one of the best child performances in recent memory, doing more to toe the line between menacing and adorable than most contemporary actors do at the top of their game.  If it’s a welcome surprise when Emily Blunt appears in the middle of the film, it gets even better when you see the chops on this kid.

Perhaps it’s a result of paying too close attention to a film that isn’t as confusing as you think, but Looper may feel a little long.  But at just under two hours, it may just be a matter of perspective.  Looper is smart and engaging, anchored by compelling performances.

Looper is rated R “for strong violence, language, some sexuality/nudity and drug content.”  The violence is quite bloody, as large guns are fired and people quite literally explode in bloody rain; characters use the F-word a fistful of times, and Joe is seen in bed with a topless stripper for one scene.  Drug content consists of futuristic eyedrop addiction.

Be sure to come back next week for a full week’s worth of Taken coverage – stay tuned!

Wind Chill (2007)

Let's go ahead and put Wind Chill on the list of reasons why I like George Clooney, who produced this thrilling horror picture directed by Gregory Jacobs. You won't, of course, feel any of Clooney's influence on the work, but I'm glad he was smart enough to bring this movie to life.

I've been a big fan of Emily Blunt since becoming a begrudging fan of The Devil Wears Prada (and, to an extent, Meryl Streep), and so her starring role in a horror film (after my recent encounter with the disappointing Blair Witch Project) was enough of an impetus for me to pick up a movie I'd never even heard of and give it a shot.

I'm glad I did. Blunt plays a college student traveling home to Delaware for Christmas break. Rather than take the bus home, she checks the ride board and finds a car headed to Delaware, though she's initially perturbed by the shy yet subtly unsettling driver, who's concealing a fairly large secret. A detour on Route 606 goes awry, and the two crash into a snowbank. Yet the budding conflict between these two co-eds is the least of their worries; the snowy woods, naturally, appear to be haunted.

First, I must offer the same caveat I gave when reviewing The Descent - perhaps this film only worked because I watched it after midnight with all the lights off. At any rate, that certainly helped make the movie a success. What helps more is the direction Jacobs gives here, building an ominous mood throughout the work, beginning with the mystery surrounding Holmes's character and reaching its discomfiting peak as the never-named protagonists try to wait out the snow storm until dawn. This movie has just the right amount of just the right kind of chills, the kind that made The Strangers a surprise success - those moments where we see an out-of-focus figure lurking just behind our oblivious hero (here, heroine more often than not). The ghosts in these woods are numerous, each more frightening than the last; though it's difficult to top the first ghost Blunt encounters, Martin Donovan's sketchy highway patrolman comes darned close.

There are a few moments in the movie that come close to not working, but they're quick and don't interfere with the thrills and chills the movie offers. The introduction of a philosophical tenet key to the meaning of the film seems a touch hackneyed, though it's quickly (and deftly) forgotten, only to be recalled when it matters. Furthermore, the movie falters a little when the history of Route 606 is revealed; the movie's put virtually on hold for a minute or so while one character narrates a ton of exposition that, honestly, attentive viewers would have been able to piece together.

And the ending. It's a good ending the way screenwriters Joseph Gangemi and Steven Katz crafted it, but it could have been a touch better if the writers had gone for a Twilight Zone-style twist ending rather than the easier and more digestible dénouement. (After the ratings analysis, I'll tell you what my ending would have been, for those interested.)

For those looking for a few good chills and a deep unsettling feeling in the pit of one's stomach, Wind Chill is perfectly serviceable in that regard. When done right, the formula of Pretty Protagonist + Creepy Male + Ghosts + Eerie Surroundings ought to equal success. The formula frequently falters, however, but Wind Chill adds up in all the right places.


The MPAA rated Wind Chill "R for some violence and disturbing images." It'd be brutally painful for me to reveal what these images are, since they're strong elements in the surprisingly dreadful mood Jacobs works so hard to craft. Suffice it to say that the ghosts are very unattractive, in varying stages of decay, and some of the ramifications of the car crash aren't pretty either.

Now for The Cinema King's ending. As it stands, the film ends - SPOILER ALERT - with Guy dying and becoming one of the ghosts, doomed as it were to repeat this life. Guy manages to save Girl from Patrolman and eventually leads her through the snowy woods to safety. What I would have liked to see would have looked very similar to this, only with Girl becoming one of the ghosts, as well. Something like that would have brought the theme of repetition fully to life, would have put that final kick to the audience's gut, and would have made Rod Serling blush with envy. In the words of the great and venerable Dennis Miller, "Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong."