The Martian

I liked The Martian so much, I hope it sparks a genre.

No, not near-future science fiction.  Not Mars.  Not even Survival.  I hope it sparks a genre called “Smart, capable people solving problems.”  Like Apollo 13, and even like All is Lost, it’d be a genre without villains and without gunfire (But ‘splosions are always ok.  What’s the point of a movie camera if you can’t point it at a ‘splosion?).  It’d just be people figuring out how to do stuff. In The Martian, near-future astronaut (and botanist) Matt Damon needs to figure out how to survive being marooned on Mars while NASA scientists need to figure out how to rescue him.  That’s more than enough drama for 144 minutes of film.

Why?  Because figuring out how to do stuff is absolutely fundamental to the human condition.  As such, drama about this process is both universal and captivating (if done right).

Hang on a minute: I’ve just described the “heist” movie.  Smart, capable, professional criminals solving problems are the bread and butter of heist movies.  Apollo 13, All is Lost, and The Martian are basically heist movies in which the characters are trying to figure out how to save a life instead of crack a safe.

Man, I love heist movies.

Ok, back to it.  Drew Goddard adapted The Martian’s screenplay from Andy Weir’s novel of the same name.  Goddard wrote and directed the superlative The Cabin in the Woods, another tightly plotted and thoroughly entertaining film.  In one his promotional interviews, director Ridley Scott said that Goddard’s Martian script was the best he’d seen since Alien, and I believe it.  I can’t wait to see what Goddard writes next.

As for the rest of the pieces of the puzzle, Christopher Orr says it best in this ‘Atlantic’ article.  The Martian is a tale of people who are good at their jobs doing their jobs well, and The Martian is a product of people who are good at their jobs doing their jobs well.  It’s a pleasure to behold.

Oh, on another note: Devin Faraci at birthmoviesdeath.com makes a great point about the inspirational power of this film.  No, not like those silly posters of people rowing crew that one finds on the walls of dispiriting cubicle farms.  The Martian is the kind of movie that inspires kids to grow up to work at JPL, or NASA, or the USDA.  Sure, it’s easy to make astronauts look cool, but your average kid has a better chance of growing up to play in the NBA than make it into the Space Program.  Show me a movie that makes science qua science, math qua math look cool, and you have a movie to which I am absolutely going to drag my kids.

Four Brief Takes

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

Hey do you like movies which invite you to spend 90 minutes laughing at (rather than with) their characters? Me neither. Unfortunately, that's The Incredible Burt Wonderstone in a nutshell. Despite a real knowledge of and fondness for magicians and their craft, the film can't overcome its fundamental mean-spiritedness.

Incredibly, Burt Wonderstone couldn't pull so much as a chuckle out of thin air. I should have cleaned out my house's raingutters, instead.

Elysium

Elysium is Matt Damon's shot at a Big Concept, Big Budget science-fiction adventure. Unfortunately, the Big Concept is that Rich People are Bad, which is laughable coming from a studio owned and run by rich people.

Sanctimony, however, isn't Elysium's greatest flaw. That honor gets divided between dullness and ugliness. Elysium is dull because its hero takes so long to get from “self-absorbed jerk” to “hero” that we've lost empathy by the time he's made the transition. It's dull because its villains are so villainous that they aren't even interesting. It's dull because its internal contradictions glare so brightly that they keep the audience from suspending disbelief. And it's dull just because it drags. Elysium is ugly because – heck, I don't know, maybe director Neil Blomkamp (of the remarkable District 9) just likes ugliness.

This is a tedious, dull, annoying, ugly film.  Pass it by.

The Wolverine

I saw The Wolverine about a week ago, and I've already forgotten nearly everything about it other than a ridiculous hand-to-hand battle with a cyborg samurai.  It's as if the movie had never even existed.

Taken 2

If you liked Taken, you'll like Taken 2. It's an unapologetic rehash of the first film, set this time in Istanbul. Hey, I liked Taken. I like Istanbul. I got my money's worth.

Contagion

I used to work at a place that did professional wargaming.  Not the kind with little paper chits and 20-sided dice, but the kind in which we got a bunch of smart and capable people in a room, threw them a scenario, and analyzed how they did (or didn’t) work together to deal with the situation.  Contagion feels like a dramatization of one of those wargames.

The scenario: a highly contagious, deadly virus comes out of Macau, borne abroad by several of the thousands of international travelers who pass through in a given week.  It propagates around the world exponentially.  Player #1: you’re an epidemiologist with the World Health Organization.  Player #2: you’re the head of the CDC.  Player #3: Homeland security.  Player #4: a suburban city councilwoman at the American center of the epidemic.  Go.

Does it work in the film?  Yeah.  Likeable stars like Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, and Lawrence Fishburne put faces to dilemmas, helping us humanize the scope of the epidemic and empathize with their respective ethical and professional challenges.  The stories weave together fluidly, each informing the others and catching us up in their combined narrative.  The film rockets along and never feels like the dull procedural it could have become.  Contagion challenged and fascinated me, making me feel like I was back in the room of one of those wargames, moving things along and learning from the process.

Grim as the film’s subject matter surely is, I found it to be intellectually and emotionally satisfying.  I walked out thinking, “That’s how it could really play out.  Nice work.”  I haven’t changed my mind, even if I have changed my habits: I’m washing my hands more.

Hereafter

Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter tells three tales separated by time, distance and class, ties them together at the end, and leaves us feeling like we never really got into any of them.

In Tale 1, a beautiful and rich Frenchwoman has a near death experience and embarks on a journey of discovery about what we think we know about the afterlife.  In Tale 2, a boy loses his twin brother in a tragic accident and deals with the disillusionment that comes from seeing a variety of frauds who claim to be able to help him get in touch with his beloved sibling.  In Tale 3, a legitimate psychic tries to run from his gift because it’s virtually impossible to build a life when you spend all your time working with the dead.

Here’s the problem: unlike, say Amores Perros, which juggles its tales in a way that keeps us invested in all of them simultaneously, Hereafter makes us wish the damn thing would settle down with one story and tell it properly.  Just as we get in to a particular character’s life, the film changes focus and we feel frustrated.  Hereafter would have been much better served by telling its three stories one a time, then putting them together in last 15 minutes. 

I like Clint Eastwood.  I like this film’s performers.  I’d have loved to have gotten lost in Hereafter.  But this film errs in its structure, and it doesn’t work as well as it could.  Bummer.

The Bourne Ultimatum

A short time back, a friend of mine opined that THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM was essentially the same movie as THE BOURNE SUPREMACY. While I agree that ULTIMATUM was nearly a remake of SUPREMACY, I didn't mind. I liked SUPREMACY, so more of that jump-cut action was fine with me.

The thing I like about the Bourne movies is that they make hard stuff look hard. The fights look like real, brutal fights for survival, not staged dances. There is no graceful parkour: running across rooftops is hard, and dangerous. People breathe heavily when they've been running or fighting, and actions have resonance. This is not a world of easy death or winking nihilism. This is a world in which real actions have real consequences, and I always enjoy visiting it.

Damon, Allen, and Strathairn are all top notch, and the filmmakers cared enough to get serious talents such as Paddy Considine, Albert Finney, and Scott Glenn for some of the smaller supporting roles. Yeah, the story doesn't go very far and the film doesn't resonate all that much, but it's a fun ride while it lasts.

Ocean's 13

OCEAN’S 13 is like bubblegum. It’s unpretentious, it’s essentially kid stuff, and it’s fun. What more do you need?

Here’s the setup: George Clooney and his gang go after yet another Vegas Casino. How these guys’ faces aren’t on every wanted poster in the city is beyond me, but there you have it. And really, that’s all you need to know. Their motivation is irrelevant.

What really matters here is the film’s style, and OCEAN’S 13 has style to spare. The locations are fabulous, the wardrobe is fabulous, and the dialogue is just plain fun. C’mon – it even has Eddie Izzard in a small yet crucial role. And if Eddie Izzard isn’t enough to get you queue up a movie, well, why do you even bother?

Ellen Barkin and Al Pacino both model the latest in age-defying technologies, everyone appears to be having a good time, the heist is sufficiently intricate, and I enjoyed the heck out of OCEAN’S 13. What more could a guy ask for?

The Good Shepherd

Filmmaker Joe McDonald sent me his thoughts on the THE GOOD SHEPHERD. I enjoyed his writing so much that I thought I'd pass it along to you.

Believe the peanut gallery, "TGS" was booorrring: **. I am so glad, in hindsight, that you were so compelled to suggest "Rocky Balboa" when it was "TGS" that I really had my eye on last Christmas.

Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson, a Yale graduate who, I believe, belonged to that same stupid secret society that Bush belongs to that signifies the beginning of a career of puppet-mastering in offices of power and prestige. At the cusp of graduation, Damon is approached by an army general (Robert DeNiro) to help form an organization that creates information and misinformation to assist the war effort during WWII, an organization we have come to know now as the CIA. And so begins a life of seven-day work weeks, talking in crypto-speak, a friendless environment, and alienating oneself from the family Damon loves. When he is approached by the same army general to head a similar peacetime organization to fight the Cold War, gee, how can he resist?

Why did this movie not work? There were no goals in this movie. I needed to see the value of having a CIA during World War II and thereafter. I needed to see Damon achieve a victory during the war that demonstrates his value to such an organization and seeing him get hooked. I needed to see some history and background of the CIA. This could have been soooo interesting. What I saw was the stoic faces, the subtextual conversations, shady characters, and close acquaintances getting killed during the war. I kept yelling at the TV for Damon to ditch the job, dump Angelina Jolie, and find that hot, deaf girl he was dating in college so that he can teach poetry at some northeast prep school like he wants to.

"TGS" looked fabulous visually, the cast is an all-star team of Oscar nominees and winners, the set dec and costumes are second to none. Hell, the screenwriter is Eric Roth ("Munich", "Forrest Gump", "The Insider"). What happened here?! Were all the good parts edited out? Is DeNiro a bad director?

What I do know is that I began to balance my checkbook at the halfway point of this movie. Pass on it.

The Departed

When THE DEPARTED’s final credit rolled, I looked at my watch and thought, “Where did the time go?” Scorsese’s film, which clocked in at over two hours, raced by and I enjoyed every single minute. And yet, much as I liked it (and I really, really liked it), I think INFERNAL AFFAIRS is a better picture.

INFERNAL AFFAIRS, the Hong Kong Thriller remade in THE DEPARTED, stars Andy Lau and Tony Leung in the Damon and DiCaprio roles, respectively. The movies are nearly identical, with one major exception: moral ambiguity. In THE DEPARTED, Matt Damon’s character is a gangster in his heart. His decisions come from a position of self-interest and cold analysis of his situation. In INFERNAL AFFAIRS, Lau’s character began as a gangster, but he’s spent so much time on the right side of the law that he’s no longer playacting: he has conditioned himself to goodness and there’s a very real part of him that genuinely wants to become good. In THE DEPARTED, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character is noble at heart. He’s so filled with horror at the demands of undercover work and sublimated fear of death that he turns to pills just to help him maintain his equilibrium. In INFERNAL AFFAIRS, Leung’s character kind of likes being a gangster: he’s grown used to it and, though he’d like to come in, we have a sense that he could continue to thrive in the underground world to which he’s become accustomed.

Don’t get me wrong: there’s a lot to like about THE DEPARTED. It’s a Scorsese picture, so of course it looks and sounds great. The cast is phenomenal, the story brisk, and situations involving. It’s a four-star movie, no doubt about it. But I like a little more moral ambiguity in my movies. INFERNAL AFFAIRS wins by a nose.

Ocean's 12

I'm trying to decide whether OCEAN'S 12 is an ironic commentary on
itself and sequels in general or just a tired rehash of a
once-interesting premise.

In the film, Danny Ocean and his crew are brought back because, well
because they have to. It's a money thing. This time around, they're
expected to do their thing, but to do it bigger, better, and faster.
To succeed, they need ever-more elaborate plots, a kaleidescope of
obstacles real and imagined, and surprises behind surprises behind
surprises. While they're first job was fun, however, this one is a
joyless exercise in obligation, performance for performance's sake.
In other words, it's a sequel.