Blackbird (2020)

 Score: 4 / 5

If you know me, you know "dinner party gone wrong" is my favorite genre, after horror. The acting has to be top-notch to pull it off. The script has to be brutal and beautiful. The filmmaking or theatrical staging, whichever the case, has to be kinetic in such a confined space. Of course, often such dinner parties only comprise a single scene or sequence, either as inciting incident, climactic turn, or devastating conclusion. Sometimes they pan the full work, but that is rare. Blackbird features one such dinner, during the climax, but the movie constructed around this scene is so intimate, isolated, and insightful, that the whole thing feels very much like my favorite brand of family tragicomedy.

Lily awakens in her gorgeous Connecticut home overlooking a picturesque beach. Her husband Paul is already up-and-at-em, watering the plants and feeding the chickens, while Lily labors to put on her slippers and get downstairs to the kitchen. Her hand is clenched and she has trouble walking. Something is wrong, indicated partly by the somber music and by the idyllic, almost ethereal lighting streaming through the wall-to-wall windows. But she is not to be pitied; preparing for breakfast, she quickly switches the classical radio to jarring pop dance music and the two laugh as they get into the beat. It's sweet and charming, and it wouldn't work without two consummate, brilliant actors with stirring chemistry in Susan Sarandon and Sam Neill.

Lily has invited her family for the weekend, and they slowly begin to arrive. Her best friend of many decades Elizabeth (Lindsay Duncan) materializes, clearly comfortable with her life companions. Her well-to-do daughter Jennifer (Kate Winslet) arrives promptly on time, her husband and son (Rainn Wilson and Anson Boom) in tow. Late, and pleasantly buzzed on grass, Lily's younger daughter Anna (Mia Wasikowska) shows up with her sometime semi-romantic girlfriend Chris (Bex Taylor-Klaus). Each is given an archetype clear from their introduction, but in the hands of such a stellar cast, each is fleshed out beyond the bounds of their script, imbued with more nuance than you could find in an ensemble masterclass. They turn what is, admittedly, sometimes unwieldy dialogue into something approaching high art, and eke out surprisingly brutal emotions from otherwise simple, even wordless, moments.

Why have they gathered? Here's the kicker: Lily is dying. No real shocker there, as everyone is well aware of her degenerative disease. But Lily has decided, with her husband and with some measure of understanding and support from the family, to end her own life after this weekend. As she intends it, she will be filled with the joy of celebrating a final Christmas with them (even though it is not, in fact, winter) before committing suicide, passing peacefully into sleep and avoiding the messy, painful, and torturous decline she will certainly otherwise face. What's amazing about her character -- and the way the film uses her as the family's anchor, with everyone else swirling around while dealing with grief and denial and anger -- is that she has no fear, no second thoughts, and only love to give. She tells her grandson at one point that she has no wisdom to give, despite her age, but she is wrong. She works on forgiveness and compassion with her daughters only to learn that she's already been an amazing mother.

That's not to say there are no problems. As the family members break off to have difficult conversations privately -- and sometimes very much not privately -- the film teeters close to soap. But, given the strengths of the cast and their devotion to this difficult melodrama, each scene will elicit a dark chuckle, a knowing smile, or a painful tear from viewers who allow its sensitive beats to wash over them. By the halfway point, I was weeping, and by the end, sobbing uncontrollably. This is an unusual entry for director Roger Michell, but it also feels a natural direction for his oeuvre at this point. A beautiful parable about a life well-lived and the grace we must learn to afford for others, but also fiercely relevant in its grounded (albeit privileged) observations about what so many of us must eventually experience.

The Meg (2018)

Score: 1 / 5

If you know me at all, you know I love shark movies. The endlessly photogenic ocean, lounging beach bodies, and of course the silent, toothy terrors coming from below. Whether these films combine their horror with comedy, science fiction, indie minimalism, or surprising arthouse aesthetics, these movies beautifully round out the summer movie season and lead us into that creepy autumnal season before the Oscar race.

Unfortunately, not all shark movies carry their weight, and The Meg is more of a sinker than a swimmer. A gloriously promising premise -- that, below a natural barrier in the Mariana Trench, prehistoric life continues to thrive -- worthy of Arthur Conan Doyle or Michael Crichton gives way to mindless action and endlessly stupid dialogue paired with absurd plotting and laughably contrived setpieces. The whole thing is a wreck that had me laughing not at its comedy but at its utter lack of enjoyability.

But instead of just lampooning this flick, I'll meditate on what could have been; that is, let's look at some ways this movie might have succeeded on its own terms.

1. Simplify. This is summer blockbuster fare, so treat it as such. The Meg wastes its budget on silly details in its first and third acts. We don't need to spend so much time staring at so much money going into the underwater research facility with its state-of-the-art-appearing lighting and design. The only possible reason for the excess is for that single shot of the megalodon staring at the little girl and then biting the glass tunnel. Instead, we could have spent that money on the action scenes, on better CG imagery, on cinematography that didn't shake and roll so much we can't see what's happening. Or, you know, on screenwriters who know what they're doing.

2. The girl. Really, this is the stroke of genius the movie squandered. Shuya Sophia Cai plays Meiying, the daughter of one of the researchers (badass Suyin Zhang, played by Li Bingbing), whose presence is the sole saving grace of the film. She knows what's up, and her few one-liners steal the movie. Why wouldn't we want to focus on her? Think of it: What if the little girl -- one who self-proclaims to see and hear everything in the research station -- can solve the problem of the giant prehistoric shark? It'd be part of the grand history of monster movies to have a child with her books outsmart the adults with all their guns.

Plus, a focus on the child could help facilitate the three things hinted at but failing in this film: wonder at the vastness of the ocean, comedy regarding the outrageous proceedings, and terror in the form of the Meg. It would also help cut out the insipid subplots that never work: the strained romance between Li Bingbing and leading man Jason Statham, the moneygrubbing annoyance that is Rainn Wilson, and the weirdly contrived elements of everyone else's character.

2. Why so serious? The Meg takes itself far too seriously, considering its bizarre, absurdist presentation. It should have embraced its own hilarity while holding fast to what makes it all so scary. Really, this could have been a delightful romp in the style of Jaws or Piranhas instead of simply stealing plot elements from them and trying to do something action-oriented.

Case in point: As the third act begins, the Meg heads toward a crowded summer beach on Sanya Bay, China. I began giggling uncontrollably, which might not have been a good thing because it's also at this point that the film features a great many Chinese extras for the first time; the film's arguably racist effect of presenting such a ubiquitous Chinese body as shark bait notwithstanding, they're also mostly silly, inconsequentially characterized. My giggling came from my frustrations with the movie up to this point and my eager expectation that -- finally -- we would see the shark movie I had hoped for, complete with the beast ripping through tides of people. Unfortunately, these happened to be non-white people, and so I then felt pangs of guilt for laughing at their inevitable fate.

Despite some admittedly lovely moments in this beach scene -- notably one involving the shark dragging three rafts like bumper boats through the crowded water -- it all fizzles out with still more absurdities treated as high action. What a disaster. Finally, after the beast has been slain and the populace saved, the camera sinks down below the water during the credits (soundtracked by a puzzling Thai version of "Hey Mickey" for no reason), and I stayed for the sole hope of seeing a (SPOILER ALERT) third Meg swim up from the deep. I hoped in vain.

Don't let the promise of a giant prehistoric shark lure you into this movie. Just enjoy the trailer (which is pretty darn fun); it's more artfully made than the film. Or go watch a better shark flick. Rewatch Jaws. Enjoy The Shallows. Torment yourself with Open Water. Treat yourself with 47 Meters Down. And, whatever you do, stay out of the water.

IMDb: The Meg