Tetris (2023)

Score: 2 / 5

It's not exactly the kind of film anybody expects or wants. The supposedly real-life story of how one of the first digital games became a worldwide phenomenon sounds interesting enough, but ultimately we're just talking about Tetris. Blocks slowly falling as you attempt to create full rows and stop the buildup. A time-waster of the highest order, the game now lends itself to a film that could have leaned into that mentality. Instead, the film, an AppleTV+ exclusive, tries desperately to spin a yarn of international intrigue framed by big business, government oversight, and fraud, as if the whole escapade was a spy flick. I don't think the premise or concept is inherently wrong or misguided, but I can tell you it certainly did not interest, engage, or enlighten me.

Directed by Jon S. Baird (Stan & Ollie, Filth), Tetris tries desperately to be the exciting story of Henk Rogers, founder of an American software company who "discovers" a new video game and wants in on its big rollout to the world. As narrator, Rogers plays a strange game like a cheap magician, carrying us along a wildly complex ride of patents and copyrights and laws between major software firms and agencies in the Soviet Union, Japan, and the U.S. He notices the oddball game at a convention in Tokyo, learns it was quietly developed by a Russian programmer and distributed privately, and decides that with details about its popularity and potential beyond the Iron Curtain, he wants to make it big by licensing and distributing it worldwide.

The problem is that Rogers is in way over his head. He's a low-level entrepreneur suddenly thrust into the world of big business in the quickly blooming computer age, yes, but also in Cold War politics and legalities. As such, Baird's approach to storytelling goes from a dynamic, kinetic enthusiasm in the early part of the film to a color-leeched and more somber tone once Rogers gets to Russia. Fittingly, his family welfare suffers as a result of his single-minded determination to own the game, and their financial future is as much at stake as his relationship with his wife and daughter. Thankfully, Taron Egerton proves himself yet again as a compelling and deeply nuanced leading man -- something his flashy big action and fantasy roles thus far haven't quite showcased -- and his Rogers is the kind of intriguing almost-antihero that plays off both his charming likability and his dubious integrity. Maybe that's unfair, as the film doesn't really question his business practices, but his somewhat innocent incompetence in understanding the politics of "keep out of Russia" and "other suits don't play fair" feels more convenient than believable for most of the film. Especially given his tireless perseverance.

A great ensemble fills out the large cast of characters, including a shrewish Toby Jones as negotiator Robert Stein and especially Roger Allam as Robert Maxwell, the infamous business villain of the 1980s, who together with his son Kevin (Anthony Boyle) attempts to profit from Tetris by meeting directly with Gorbachev. It's all kind of interesting, but mired and muddled with lots of talk about market value and copyrights and frankly I didn't understand most of what was happening. Things become a bit more clear as Rogers attempts to avoid and also work with the Soviet authorities, but they're so hammily caricatured that these scenes feel like a different movie altogether. Case in point: a Russian thug literally threatens to throw a child out a window several floors up to demonstrate that everything -- like in Tetris -- falls at the same rate, thanks to gravity. It's the kind of zinger that could provoke chills if it wasn't cartoonishly funny.

I don't know entirely if the breezy, cheeky tone is all Baird's doing, or writer Noah Pink's (who really should be applauded anyway for turning such a drab, drawn out story into something at least concise and dramatic), or simply because Matthew Vaughn produced it. Regardless, the ambivalent and somewhat condescending tone is thoroughly not entertaining; vilifying Russians as "crazy" in this day and age feels more than a little tone-deaf, as does championing the victories of capitalism over communism. In fact, apart from Rogers, ultimately made into an underdog against the USSR, no other character in the film is much more than a caricature of various archetypes. The film itself feels like it wants to lean into the intricacies of politics and finance, but it undercuts its own efforts with breakneck editing, insider jargon you can barely follow, and truly bizarre special effects littered throughout to remind us that in Rogers's head, apparently, colorful blocks are always falling. Trouble is, he's not a savant, and this isn't The Queen's Gambit (which I also generally dislike, for different reasons but on similar premises).

Tolkien (2019)

Score: 2 / 5

Orphaned teenager Ronald is an outcast at his new school, probably because he's too smart for his own good. One of his first lessons sees a bully steal his textbook before he's called on to read Chaucer in Old English; as the other students prepare to watch him be shamed by the professor, he recites the passage beautifully from memory. This earns him no friends. Not yet.

Taking center stage in Tolkien, a biopic of the young J.R.R. Tolkien in adventures of life and love, is Nicholas Hoult as the esteemed writer. His solid performance is matched by his comrades, notably Lily Collins as his love Edith Bratt and Anthony Boyle as his friend Geoffrey Bache Smith. Young Tolkien's hard work and brilliant mind eventually earn him the respect -- and, yes, friendship -- of three other young men including Geoffrey, and together the four create a club of intellectual artists. Meanwhile Tolkien maneuvers ever closer to Edith, whose life is far more restricted than his own and who seems to fall in love with the freedoms Tolkien's imagination offers her.

We see hints, occasionally, of Tolkien's legendarium in his early life, but the film largely glosses over the significant events and works that inspired his greatest creation (or, if you know better, his "sub-creation"). The closest we get to witnessing his genius blossom is in the heat of World War I, as he fights through the Battle of the Somme. Clouds of gas belch forth visions of wraiths and ghosts, one explosion may be a balrog's attack and another spews from a dragon's maw. Tolkien plunges through pools of mud and blood choking with bodies in what we might call dead marshes while green poisonous gas oozes through the trenches. It's really the only sequence in the film worth watching.

The film hosts, now I think on it, two other scenes that are interesting for other reasons. One is between Tolkien and his friend Geoffrey, strongly indicated in the film to be queer and filled with unrequited love for his comrade. The two are together the morning after Tolkien learned his childhood love Edith is engaged to another man and drank himself into a stupor; Geoffrey delivers a stunning speech about unrequited love being the most pure, beautiful, and terrible thing a man can know: a perfect subject for poetry. The other interesting scene comes immediately after, when Tolkien meets and begins to learn from Professor Joseph Wright (played by Derek Jacobi).

These scenes are the only moments in the film of gorgeous screenwriting. Everything else falls woefully short of the grandeur and potential insight into Tolkien's life. His religious ideas are almost totally erased, as are his childhood and years after WWI. The actual inspirations and influences on his work are skated over, suggested, or completely ignored. Instead, we get a lovely romance about how a man maneuvers between coming of age, love, and burgeoning artistic genius. Too bad they had to tack on the real-life names and so blatantly water down everything interesting about the real man.