The Red Sea Diving Resort (2019)

Score: 1 / 5

What a disaster. I can forgive a fictionalized account of real events. I can forgive a simplified, action-heavy story if it's important. I can forgive non-representative casting. But put it all together into a boring mess of wasted talent, forgettable plot, confusing filmmaking, and irresponsible storytelling, and The Red Sea Diving Resort marks a miserably low viewing experience during this quarantine season.

The story concerns a group of Mossad agents who purchase and operate the titular coastal resort in order to smuggle Ethiopian Jews out of the country and to safety in Israel. I feel embarrassed to admit I know nothing of the plight of this population of Jewish refugees in real life, however this film does less than nothing to educate me. In fact, I feel more bewildered after having watched it. There seems to be a vague Muslim threat -- the  but this bleeds into what appears to be less-than-casual racism in which a bunch of white actors portray the Israelis and black actors play either the victims or the villains. Accusations of racism are nothing new for writer/director Gideon Raff (who is a fascinating person but has yet to make anything worth watching, at least anything accessible to Americans).

The opening sequence makes my case for me. With no explanation or context whatsoever, a bunch of Ethiopian villagers are fleeing gun-toting Ethiopian (or perhaps Sudanese?) soldiers. As they pile into waiting trucks, a mother cries out for her missing child, who is obliviously playing in a nearby field. Help her, Chris Evans, you're her only hope. Enter the hero himself, who grabs the boy and makes it to safety in the nick of time, as gunfire rips the air apart in his wake. Leave it to the white savior to save the little brown baby and get this movie off to a jump-start.

After some bizarre scenes of Chris Evans -- a Mossad agent who has returned to Israel to debrief with Ben Kingsley -- sleeplessly angst-ing about his friend and the other Ethiopian Jews who need his help, he is directed to assemble a team of avengers. Oh, no, I'm sorry, that's wrong. He gathers a group of other (possibly former?) Mossad colleagues and they go to the titular resort on the coast of Sudan, purchased for them by Israel. They plan to use the resort as a front for their operation: housing refugees and shipping them to an Israeli ship off in the Red Sea. It's all very Underground Railroad of them until tourists show up actually wanting to use the resort for... resort-y things.

Scenes like this that could be funny or tense are squandered by a truly confoundingly stupid screenplay. Characters describe each other and their situations, motivations, and explanations in point-blank terms, proving that the writer didn't think real people could emote or an editor could make sense of the action. What could be compelling characters become dullards, played blankly by actors who are otherwise beautiful to look at (Michiel Huisman and Alessandro Nivola can get it, to say nothing of Haley Bennett). Chris Evans proves again that he's a waste of an actor (excepting his turn in Knives Out), if a brilliant action movie star.

And then there's Chris Chalk, who is actually quite chilling as the movie's villain, because of course there has to be one in an action movie. A historical drama this most certainly is not. He plays a Sudanese soldier who torments the Ethiopian Jews waiting to flee his grasp with a menacing presence, but even he is undermined by Raff's bizarre storytelling. The film's midpoint is a lighthearted sequence of the Mossad agents revitalizing the dusty resort to better disguise their covert operations. It's inspired by a mostly naked Chris Evans waking up on a sunny morning and seeing the resort tenants doing tai chi on the sand before chatting nonchalantly with a speedo-sporting Michiel Huisman. It's funny and cute and sweet, feeling like it belongs in a very different movie altogether, spliced together in a retro montage underscored by Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf" (did I mention this movie takes place in the '80s? Because it constantly reminds you of that). It cuts abruptly -- and unearnedly -- to a scene of Chris Chalk murdering Jews while he interrogates them, a tasteless and offensive turn that pulls you so far out of the movie it is impossible to get back in.

The story might be wonderful, but I need to look up the historical record. This movie taught me nothing about what really happened. It turns real-life heroes into caricatures, and then attempts to make them into action movie heroes. It's not memorable, educational, inspiring, or even entertaining. Well, except the beautiful white heroes in their beach-wear.

Anesthesia (2015)

Score: 2.5 / 5

The thing about ensemble dramas is that we love them. Even when they're not great, we get pulled in by the talent and hope the movie works too. Tim Blake Nelson tries again here to be the writer and director of a sprawling film highlighting the interconnected nature of human life, and this time he assembles the cast to make it worth a watch. It's just too bad his work doesn't provide a better foundation for them.

It would seem that Anesthesia might concern a feeling of numbness in modern life, a sort of artificial coping mechanism to deal with the pains of our existence. To some extent, Nelson's film does explore those ideas. We have a philosophy professor (Sam Waterston) preparing for retirement and contemplating his life's work as he aims for purpose- or intent-driven behaviors and one of his students (Kristen Stewart) who harms herself. We have an alcoholic housewife (Gretchen Mol) and mother of two trying to be the picture-perfect school mom, though her husband (Corey Stoll) is having an affair somewhere in town. We have an intelligent but failed writer (Nelson himself) and his children who are all fighting different addictions while his wife confronts cancer. It's a messy ensemble, and the actors fir their parts perfectly, performing with conviction and passion.

But though they're all trying to anesthetize themselves, Nelson does the exact opposite for us, plucking our heartstrings with wild abandon and forcing us to feel every little sting. Uncomfortably funny but comically sad, the whole enterprise feels underbaked. Contrived at best, the plot feels like Crash but cheaper and simpler and with a thesaurus. Waxing philosophic at every turn, the film meanders with a nihilistic goal, as its various themes of coming of age, addiction, fatality, depression, purpose, fidelity, and of course DEATH get pounded into our ears. Waterston carries the real weight here along with Stewart, as they deliver lengthy, complex monologues about the pains and purposes of life.

While I ordinarily like this heavy, heady stuff, here there is so little dramatic meat to feast on that the monologues feel gimmicky and cruel, a cerebral venture without focus. It tries so hard to make us empathize with its characters, but ultimately the film doesn't let us know much about the characters beyond their spotlight moments of revelation. They quickly become archetypes, caricatures of experimental teens, troubled spouses, struggling addicts, and none of them stick in your mind once the credits start rolling. One character refers to an "echo chamber", and that is an unfortunate but apt description of this film.

IMDb: Anesthesia

Assassin's Creed (2016)

Score: 2.5 / 5

Distinctly underwhelming but still a hell of a good time, Assassin's Creed is first and foremost a video game. I've never played it, and now I don't feel like I need to. The film's two-hour running time might seem fair for a sci-fi/action/fantasy/adventure flick about secret societies, martial arts, the Spanish Inquisition, and an eagle that just keeps showing up. While its overplotted, bewilderingly paced narrative slogs on, however, we are absorbed into the jittery, jerky fight scenes that give us neither blood nor much sophistication, leaving us unsatisfied yet craving more. Much like most video games.

Similarly, while the nature of an action-based film suggests a specific style of cinematography suited for handheld intimacy and kinetic grit, the camerawork here almost completely lost me. Director Justin Kurzel (Macbeth) continues his tendency of style over substance, but here he also employs an enormous budget. Rather than enhancing the drama at hand with better focus, detail, or insight, he douses each shot with so many visual effects that nothing looks real. Ethereal and foggy, lit with operatic spotlights and saturated in color, the images are both lovely and superficial, unweighted and ultimately inconsequential. The most memorable moments are those in which one of our leads faces off against the other, often with tears in their eyes, and the camera zooms in close. If the rest of the film would only make you care about them, you might tear up too.

That said, the only thing I found to make this movie bearable were its leads. Though they are robbed of significant screen time, they all perform admirably, especially Marion Cotillard. Her typical suavity and intrigue are about as opaque as the CGI dust swirling around, but that doesn't mean she doesn't rock at what she does best. Michael Fassbender is no less spellbinding though his role here is largely physical, and damned if he doesn't make a white undershirt and gray sweats look sexier than sin.

Brendan Gleeson pops in for a couple wasted scenes, and Jeremy Irons, while lovely to behold, is largely cast aside. Charlotte Rampling makes a surprise appearance, one that we might expect to continue in a sequel or five, however many the studios churn out these days. Speaking of which, the ending does indeed feed into franchise frenzy, one that here does not seem deserved. Maybe it would have if the film was as cheery or fresh as some of the Marvel ilk, though to be fair, I totally enjoyed this picture's solemnity and lack of humor. Maybe it would have if it weren't bogged down by its own mythology, explaining itself in repetitive cycles yet still managing to ignore sizable plot holes. Maybe it would have had it allowed its best special effects -- Fassbender and Cotillard -- to shine through the digital-visual swamps and not just look pretty. Then again, their mere presence in this half-baked semi-conscious quasi-coherent picture is miraculous enough.

IMDb: Assassin's Creed