Moonfall (2022)

Score: 2 / 5

Don't Look Up told a parodical story of a real -- if vague -- fear of celestial bodies destroying Earth. It killed off the dinosaurs, right? So obviously we'll be next. And we've seen similarly inspired stories before, from Disney's Dinosaur to Lars von Trier's Melancholia, obviously each with a rather different tone. Rarely has the moon been the body meant to cause destruction (with a clear exception in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask for you gamers), so naturally it was about time. What with the US Space Force being a fairly new thing, it's amazing we haven't seen more movies like this. Well, other than 2020's Greenland, which I will maintain is among the dazzling best of the disaster genre.

In what starts as a fairly cool idea, the latest disaster flick suggests that the moon is falling out of orbit and on a spinning collision course with us. The science -- or, I guess, as someone who doesn't know physics, the "science" -- involved is fascinating, as Earth's gravity gets increasingly chaotic. What starts as global tidal waves becomes more tectonic as land masses buckle and entire cities picked up and smashed on each progressive lunar revolution. It's a cool concept, and frankly the scenes of mass destruction are really entertaining in a way only Roland Emmerich has ever really mastered.

Emmerich has made a career out of destroying the world, or at least messing it up pretty badly, and it's usually a lot of fun! Moonfall isn't an exception to the rule, and it's a typical mix of effective thrills and overproduced hooey, flavored by that delightful sci-fi "what if" suggestibility. From Independence Day to 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow, and from 10,000 BC to even Anonymous (by far my favorite of his work), he takes conspiracy theories -- or at least the idea of major existential theories -- and turns them into thrillers about mass destruction and rewriting history. Emmerich knows how to tell these stories and what audiences want visually from them, and so he usually delivers it pretty darn well, like painting the apocalypse in a wine and canvas event for his drunk and amateur friends.

The problem is usually with his writers, which often includes himself. Moonfall is a profoundly stupid film on the page, which is probably why the "master of disaster" had to independently produce this enormously-budgeted flick. What could have been a cool story about a natural disaster is warped into one of the most aggressively weird sci-fi trips since Interstellar, and I don't say that as a good comparison point. SPOILER ALERT: it's basically "Transformers" (although I know nothing about that franchise, it almost certainly fits), where the moon is a hollow shell meant to safeguard and repopulate humanity as necessary, and it is now under assault by a swarm of Artificial Intelligence machines intending to eliminate humanity. I told you this shit got weird fast.

Whatever cutesy dynamic Godzilla vs. Kong embraced in its conspiracy theorist and sidekick geek character is largely recreated here in a character played by Game of Throne's John Bradley. He's always thought the moon was a megastructure, and his combined joy and horror at discovering its displacement is a bit infectious. His initial alarmist proclamations fall on deaf ears (I told you this felt like a companion piece to Don't Look Up) and so he leaks the deets to the media before NASA finally takes him seriously and calculates less than a month before collision. The military wants to nuke the moon, but for various illogical reasons they decide first to send more astronauts up there to find out what's going on (nevermind the earlier mysterious deaths and impending death of Earth). Who do they send? Space partners Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson, because frankly nobody's character name matters.

There's a lot of wasted time on the personal lives of these characters, whose melodrama is forced and unsatisfying. Wilson's son (Charlie Plummer) is trouble, as is his estranged wife and daughters, who now live with Michael Pena's character; Berry's son has a foreign exchange babysitter (Kelly Yu); Bradley's aging mother barely remembers him, despite his having a cat memorably named Fuzz Aldrin. The dynamics of these characters are frighteningly flat, despite hard work from Bradley and average work from the other leads (except for the always amazing Donald Sutherland, who shows up for exactly one very creepy and unnecessary and unnecessarily creepy scene). Could their universally one-note characterizations -- caricaturizations? -- simply be Emmerich's latent nihilism manifesting, even as a strange campy misanthropy? Possibly, and that interpretive lens would make another screening fascinating, if I cared enough to do that.

While its premise is great (the moon, falling; I just can't get enough of that), its story is shit, and its acting ain't where it's at, Moonfall also boasts some of the strangest effects I've seen in months. Compare the effects of this with Emmerich's most recent film, Midway, and you'll see what I mean. Many scenes of this film, by comparison, are clearly sound stages, especially during the climax as multiple characters race along a winding snowy road to a safe bunker in Aspen, Colorado. It's almost laughable, if it weren't meant to be so serious; some of the special effects are pretty great here, as gravity is in a constant state of flux, but the backgrounds don't match the action. Even earlier, often something cataclysmic is happening in the backgrounds and the characters seem quite bored, indifferent, or ignorant in the foreground. So if you're here for the drama or the storytelling, save your money and time. If you're here for a zany, eccentric filmmaker entertaining his own fever dream, buckle up and settle in. It's a bumpy ride.

The Mule (2018)

Score: 3.5 / 5

In what felt like -- and could very well be -- his swan song, Clint Eastwood reminds us of everything great about him and everything not so great. For better and worse, then, we are presented a film that both works and doesn't in many ways, but one that I personally liked far better than anything he's done since J. Edgar, seven years ago.

The Mule's title refers to its main character, Earl Stone, a 90-year-old Illinois man whose life is in shambles. Having made a career of traveling and selling and networking, his family has all but abandoned him for abandoning them. Facing foreclosure and the disappointment of his granddaughter (Taissa Farmiga), he accepts a job transporting drugs for a Mexican cartel. His runs earn him lots of money, and the increasing payments prove hard to ignore; as people around him can certainly use funds, he becomes a sort of benevolent Robin Hood, providing means for his granddaughter to be married, to re-buy his house, to renovate the local VFW, to help his ailing ex-wife (Dianne Wiest). Unfortunately, a DEA strike force (including Bradley Cooper, Michael Pena, and Laurence Fishburne) is closing in on him, and the cartel will not suffer any delays.

Sound thrilling? It should -- and the oft-played trailer for this film certainly made it out to be a nail-biter. Add to this setup the fact that it's all loosely based on a real-life case (on a man from Michigan City, not far from where my parents live!) and I was ready for a masterful return to form from the man who expertly delivered staples like Mystic River and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, mystery-thrillers like Changeling and Blood Work. Add to it his recent (and much weaker) politically-minded, true-life flicks, and we reasonably supposed this would be a radical return to form, if uncomfortably timely.

I generally don't care much for Eastwood's acting, though I deeply admire the niche he carved for himself, dedicating his career to playing anti-heroes as heroes. And while I similarly admire the varied body of directorial work he's amassed, I can't help but feel constantly disappointed at his plodding workmanship evident in every picture. Not unlike Ron Howard -- but with far less craftsmanship and far more bewilderingly popular response -- Eastwood tends to overdo his films, draining what's engaging about the real (often fascinating) stories and smothering them in tense atmosphere and, yes, more than a little of his political and social biases.

Unfortunately, the film -- which could and probably should have been structured in terms of plot -- is lugubriously slow. Melancholia can certainly work in a character study, but this film is a little too stretched for that. Eastwood delivers a powerhouse performance -- one of his very finest -- as old Earl, the complex old man who is superficially likable and deceptively caring. His charisma belies deep insecurities and personal failures that eventually break him. It's a great performance, but one that Eastwood as a director treats as laughably lovable; that it most certainly is not, and it's deeply disturbing to sit in a theater of white folk laughing at the crazy, silly old man who unapologetically womanizes, praises himself for helping some "Negroes" with their flat tire, and insults Latinos with the handful of Spanish words he knows. They laugh because Eastwood laughs, not as the actor or even character, but as the director.

Final verdict: Go see this movie, or don't. Like his performance, or don't. Like the story, or don't. Like his direction, or don't (...actually, no, just don't). If you like Eastwood already, you'll probably like this one; if you don't care about him -- in any capacity -- you may not like this one either. I personally found this to be infinitely more engaging and entertaining than American Sniper or Sully or that ridiculous-looking gimmick he churned out last winter about the train.

IMDb: The Mule

Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)

Score: 4.5 / 5

I don't know why Ant-Man gets such a bad rep among the MCU heroes. It can hardly be the character, because he's one of the funniest and most grounded characters in the series; perhaps it's that he's too pedestrian, and (out of his suit) not terribly special apart from his fast-thinking, safe-cracking mind and simple old-fashioned guts. It can hardly be Paul Rudd, who gives "dad bod" a smoking hot run for its money and whose wisecracking, heartstring-tugging performance carves out its own sizeable niche in the enormous MCU cast.

Perhaps the reason Ant-Man is so low on many fans' list of favorites is because, as a film, it is far more standalone than many others in the franchise. The other heroes who have tons of money, strength, powers, and influence change big, galactic things in their films. But Ant-Man's adventures are distinctly smaller in scope, and so these films don't feel as Big and Important as, say, a Thor movie. But they're not supposed to!

Ant-Man and the Wasp is a delightful, funny, sweet, interesting, and thoroughly entertaining romp that is both welcome and needed after the last few MCU movies. There's no big war happening. Thanos is nowhere to be seen. There aren't dozens of characters to keep track of. Michael B. Jordan isn't breaking our hearts and minds. Michael Pena does his speedy voiceovers again.

This is -- much more importantly -- the first time a female character has been given title credit, and Evangeline Lilly rocks every minute of her screen time as the Wasp. She's smart, funny, badass, in a suit that isn't particularly sexualized, and shows that leading women are long overdue in the MCU. It's also notable for having one of the most clearly queer-ish scenes yet in the franchise, when Janet van Dyne (the original Wasp, played by Michelle Pfeiffer) uses her quantum entanglement with Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) to reconnect with her husband Hank Pym (Michael Douglas). Scott changes his posture and his voice and suddenly he's channeling Janet, caressing Hank's face and holding his hand as they work together to rescue Janet from the quantum realm. The whole thing may just be played for laughs -- in the screening I sat through, there was riotous laughter from the back row -- but it's a sincere moment and Hank shows no discomfort or hesitation when Scott reaches out to him in tenderness.

The rest of the film is a fitting sequel to the first Ant-Man, featuring cinematic stylization unlike anything else in the franchise, fresh and unique humor, and some really ingenius storytelling. Think about it -- we're wowed by Doctor Strange's ability to warp the very fabric of reality, but that's a whole lot of safety netting for lazy writers: mess up or reach a plot hole, and have him cast a spell or two. But team Ant-Man has to rely on careful planning, fights have to be carefully choreographed, and the special effects can often be shot practically. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but it makes these films -- all of them -- far more rich when we can appreciate their varying aesthetics.

A final note: while Walton Goggins's villainous character is boring and flat, Hannah John-Kamen plays a fascinating antagonist called Ghost. While, like Killmonger, she's not a "villain" in the usual sense, Ghost is simply trying to survive and live a life free of excruciating pain. This path puts her at odds with team Ant-Man, and so their run-ins become fights. But her thankless role and dedicated performance shine in this film, and she may be one of the most interesting antagonists yet written in the MCU. Especially cool is that she doesn't die or need to be locked up at the end, but instead is helped by our heroes. Plus, her powers (if we can even call molecular breakdown a power?) are really cool to watch, even as we're aware that they're killing her. Ghost is also notable in that, in the comics, she is a male character. Hooray for having another powerful, interesting female instead!

P.S.: The mid-credits scene -- after the fun and funny film -- drives a stake right through our warm fuzzies when, while harvesting quantum energy to help Ghost, Scott gets stuck in the quantum realm when Hank, Janet, and Hope all disintegrate into ash. They were the only ones monitoring Scott when Thanos snapped his fingers and destroyed half of humanity. It's a brutally chilling reminder of where we are in the MCU storyline that is sure to wipe the smile off your face.

IMDb: Ant-Man and the Wasp

A Wrinkle in Time (2018)

Score: 4 / 5

I don't know why this movie's getting so much crap. It's beautiful.

Disney's latest reclaiming of old territory tackles Madeleine L'Engle's sci-fi fantasy A Wrinkle in Time, a work of profound weirdness and abstraction. While critics and audiences seem intent on proclaiming the weirdness of this film, the excessive style over substance, and some sizeable plotholes, I'd argue the same things about the source material. It's a children's fantasy, for goodness' sake. In fact, compared with Lewis or Carroll or even Rowling, I'd argue that L'Engle's fantasy is notably inferior in style, scope, and detail. So before you hear any more criticisms about these elements, question the critic: Do they really know what they're talking about? And do you care?

While this new film is indeed a victory of style over substance, that totally fits its messages of beauty and empowerment. Its trippy visuals and fabulous interplay of light and darkness feel more like the book than any amount of world-building details might. More importantly, its beauty is found in its casting and design aspects. The characters quietly reveal themselves as the most diverse group I've seen from a Disney movie, and even the interracial romance at the center of the story is a total nonissue. This is the future, guys. This is the new normal. And it is glorious.

The three Mrs W (Whatsit, Who, and Which), played by Oprah Winfrey, Mindy Kaling, and Reese Witherspoon are lovely, but it's their costumers and stylists who take the real glory here. Along with the production designers and artists. Everything in this movie is colorful, extravagant, and kinetic. A Wrinkle in Time is pure escapism, pure cinema: magic cooked up on the screen and blasted into your retinas with full force. The music is as soaring as the visuals, the acting pitch-perfect, the cinematography awesome. It's got the splendor of Avatar and the heart of Narnia and a spirit all of its own, fully embracing its own glorious diversity and female empowerment.

Of course, all this praise is not to say that the movie is perfect. Far from it. Its screenplay is mostly clunky and sparse: unfocused and seemingly without real inspiration, its stumbles its way through the story with no grace. Actually, my impression of the film was that Disney spent its resources on visual artists, good actors, and a great director, and then realized they needed some kind of script. They should have just let DuVernay do her thing. Which is to say that it's pretty clear there are significant power struggles here between her visionary vision and the studio's. And it has its weird moments, to be sure. I could have lived a long and happy life without watching Reese Witherspoon turn into a flying head of lettuce. I didn't need Michael Pena falling apart like a marionette. I didn't need Zach Galifianakis at all, especially not in a part that was female in the book. And giant Oprah -- though wonderful to behold -- felt a little unnecessary.

But when a movie can so easily transport you across the galaxy, steal your heart, and leave you breathless in wonder, who cares if it's densely plotted or thickly descriptive? Again, it's a children's fantasy, y'all! Movies like this are what America needs. Honest, sweet, and quietly insinuating its political correctness into mainstream entertainment. So go. Go watch it right now. See it on as big a screen as you can. Watching this movie right now is a political act. Support it. Give in to love and hope and light and all the things this movie champions. "Be a warrior!"

IMDb: A Wrinkle in Time

The Martian (2015)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Coming on the heels of two Big, Serious space dramas, The Martian had a lot of room for error. But its great victory is that it has nothing in common whatsoever with those other films; indeed, the few moments it creeps toward resembling either Gravity or Interstellar, the filmmakers jerk it off in another direction, playing off our expectations and keeping us in constant awe. (For example, the climax involves two individuals floating around in space; it comes straight from Gravity, but ends up in a very different place.)

Where Gravity had a lot of thematic, well, gravity and allegorical import, The Martian avoids morbidity in its brave wit and dry humor while keeping its characters grounded and rational. And where Interstellar lost itself in abstractions and morbid sentimentality, The Martian keeps things fiercely realistic and logically based. I'm using words like "rational" and "realistic" to hone in on something else, too. I know almost nothing about space science, and the filmmakers are clearly targeting people like me, but I followed the reasoning behind every step of this film. I couldn't speak to the factual details, but keeping a clueless person like me so entranced for two and a half hours of science-speak is a feat. Especially considering that most of the dialogue concerns various technologies and potential plans to rescue Matt Damon.

I don't know what I was expecting, but none of the actors in this film suffered like I anticipated. Here we have a man who has had no human contact in over a year (though Mars days and Earth days are different, so I don't actually know), and he stays completely sane, rational, and even humored the entire time. Maybe we're too used to melodrama and wildly unstable characters, but I was taken completely aback by his characterization. I still can't decide if I liked it or not, but it was very different, and for now I'm fine with that. And that's to say nothing of Damon's abilities; though Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, and Chiwetel Ejiofor have some nice moments, it is Damon who carries the weight of the film. When he starts crying during the climax, I totally lost it. And it was nice to see him have some fun and do fresh work.

And speaking of fresh work, I'm glad Ridley Scott came back to form after Exodus: Gods and Kings. That was a hot mess. But this is a tight-wound thriller that feels less complicated than it is. That's something Scott has always been able to do well, and in such a way that it looks easy. Here, he relieves what could easily have become plodding plot points by speeding along from place to place with nice (though a bit too many) subtitles for time and location, and connecting scenes with a delightful soundtrack of disco music. He also, and bravely, I think, introduces important concepts and then only minimally references them as we go along. We only see our hero figure out how to talk to the scientists on Earth once; after that, we just figure it got easier and happened more often. Or we only see him learn how to make water once; after that, we just assume it becomes routine. These crucial plot points move us along, and then we forget about their continued importance as Scott pushes us into new waters every ten minutes or so. It's a gamble, and one that succeeds brilliantly.

One last thought. This is a fine film. It's definitely not on my space-adventure favorites list because I do prefer my sci-fi to be pretty dark and artsy. And yet it still won me over because of the obvious intelligence and energy that went into making it. It's one of those rare pictures that I just believed. I only occasionally thought of Matt Damon or the others as performing. It's all raw, shallow, and tight, which makes it work remarkably well in a genre of melodrama and abstractions. And, of course, when ABBA's "Waterloo" started playing right before the climax, I was in heaven.

IMDb: The Martian

Ant-Man (2015)

Score: 4.5 / 5

And the award for the most surprisingly great movie so far this year goes to.... You guessed it! I mean, come on -- Ant-Man isn't exactly the one Marvel hero everyone looks back on with fondness or even lust. I don't know, maybe it's his size?

But this movie might have set itself up as one of the best Marvel Studios films yet. It takes kinetic humor straight from Guardians of the Galaxy, proper character development from Iron Man (2008), and introduces some stylized visuals unique unto itself. More importantly, it carefully maintains a difficult balance between proper drama and humor amidst all the action and sci-fi spectacle. We have lengthy scenes of fairly somber dialogue, usually delivered by none other than Michael Douglas. While some will undoubtedly groan at the apparent lack of action, I applaud a "superhero movie" for finally giving us some concrete and worthwhile character development. Rarely have I felt this kind of gravitas in a Marvel Studios film, even when their characters are dripping blood.

But the other big part of the movie that charms me is its sheer wit. Not only is this movie intensely concerned with the characters and their articulation -- a motif explored twice quite literally, with mad props to the director and Michael Pena for those delightful sequences of visualized voiceovers -- but if the narrative has a defining trope, it is a coming of age story. I mean, here we have a guy whose history is taking things that don't belong to him, which might be one of the first sins young children enact on the playground. He finds a mentor, develops a romantic interest, grows physically into his own, and takes on the playground bully. Along the way, he gains humility (the guy shrinks to the size of an ant, for crying out loud), bravery, and, most importantly, responsibility. He learns that his gosh-darn adorable daughter (whose career has suddenly exploded with this summer's The Whispers and now this) already thinks of him as a hero, and now it's up to him to become one, as I think his ex-wife advises at one point.

If this is all a little heady, that's probably why I liked this picture. It has other virtues, too, especially in its fast-paced humor. Paul Rudd plays his character as self-aware and uses humor in a far more sensible manner than, for example, Star Lord did in Guardians. This guy is down-to-earth, which is probably good, since his ant companions spend a lot of time down there. Director Peyton Reed, whose films up to now have been comedies, I believe, allows this film more dramatic weight without ever losing its bubbly energy, a tactic seen most clearly in the final fight scene. Loud, dramatic music plays as our hero and villain fight each other in sequences of complex visual effects, and then Reed pops in a music-less shot from farther away, and we can barely see our characters as we remember they are only the size of ants.

It's not a particularly original idea -- even the central conflict is recycled from Age of Ultron, wherein Corey Stoll's (House of Cards) villainous character seeks an all-powerful police force of sorts -- and it's by no means the most action-packed movie this summer. But a lot can be said for a film with simple goals that is produced with an eye for excellence. A lot can also be said for a superhero film (a genre dominated by white, straight American men) that concerns itself more with family than with hetero-romantic flings, more with friendship and trust across ethnic lines than with suspicion and antagonism of other ethnic groups, and more with the rising power of women along with men than with woman as office workers and sexual objects. So bravo, Ant-Man. Let's do it again soon.

PS: The fight between Falcon and Ant-Man is possibly one of the best scenes yet in the franchise. I hope we can look forward to more of these low-stakes scuffles between our scrappy Avengers. But seeing as the next big film is subtitled Civil War, I have my doubts.

IMDb: Ant-Man

Fury (2014)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Fury is brutal. It's now one of my favorite war movies -- ranking behind Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker (2008) and Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998)-- but I don't know how many times I'll watch it again. Writer/director David Ayer has crafted a compact, concentrated, and complex vision of war as hell that left me reeling and, yes, weeping.

Our battle-scarred heroes are at the forefront of the final stage of World War II, pushing into the heart of battle-scarred Nazi Germany in their battle-scarred tank, named Fury. Like their tank, the five-man crew has to act in perfect tandem or risk injury, death, and -- more important for them -- defeat. Passing through enthusiasm and honor to isolation, desperation, and horror, the men are forced to eventually make a last stand (literally at a crossroads) against a small army of Nazi elites. This story is not for the faint of heart.

Brad Pitt's performance as the leader of our team is really solid. It wasn't the best I've seen from him, but he carries the film with a risky and successful war-hardened stoicism. His character, however, is wildly interesting, as in one scene he shoots an unarmed prisoner in the back, in one he protects two German women from his own men. He also acts as brother and father to his team, drinking with them and breaking in the fearful, idealistic new member. His crew consists of admirable actors Jon Bernthal (The Walking Dead) and Michael Pena (End of Watch, Gracepoint) in strong performances, and Pitt takes his orders from an understated and haunted Jason Isaacs (The Patriot, Harry Potter).

The real acting gems in this movie are in Logan Lerman and Shia LaBeouf. Lerman (Percy Jackson, The Perks of Being a Wallflower) -- the young, recently enlisted typist -- can't fulfill his role as gunner due to his idealistic innocence. Pitt literally forces him to shoot a Nazi prisoner, and Lerman's arc from miserable disillusionment to the hero of the film is the stuff of aged veterans. LaBeouf (Nymphomaniac, Disturbia) plays the chief gunner and spiritual counsel to the group, and frankly his tears brought mine every time. Well-meaning but spiritually tortured, his Bible-quoting rhythms and compassionate emoting brought a much-needed sense of humanity to the film. I strongly recommend you see this movie simply for his performance, if nothing else. Which is saying a lot, because the claustrophobic atmosphere brings these five men together with remarkable homosocial honesty and emotional vulnerability.

In our world of role-playing, first-person, over-simplified, graphically violent war games, my favorite thing about Fury is that it never once feels simple, computer-generated, or remotely machismo in its approach to the subject matter. Ayer eyes most of the rubble-strewn, muddy landscape in grayscale, and heavily dirties every prop, costume, and actor's face. He also surprises us with unexpected and shocking violence, as we see bayonets through eyes, bodies under tank treads, and legs blown apart. We even see images so subtle but profound that they enhance our horror beyond the gore, including a refugee still wearing her wedding dress, and an older woman cutting meat from a dead horse. Against the tactile grit of Fury's images plays Steven Price's (Gravity) gorgeous score, featuring a men's chorus in spine-tingling efficacy.

IMDb: Fury