Heart of Stone (2023)

Score: 1.5 / 5

Gal Gadot is an arresting screen presence and a delight to watch doing just about anything, but Heart of Stone is not the kind of action vehicle I'll ever want to rewatch. Netflix clearly wants this to be the start of a new espionage/action series with bankable stars, and for viewers who just want to watch pretty people hop around the globe and blow things up, it arguably fits the bill. But it's hard, while watching, not to compare it constantly to other, better films in the same vein. Its nonsensical screenplay and peripatetic editing belie a film that is wildly over-produced, calculated to within an inch of its life to be as flat and un-dynamic as possible. And not in a campy, metafictional, or ironic way.

Gadot plays Rachel Stone, a new MI6 technician who, in the opening sequence, is forced into the field for the first time. Her team, attempting to extract an arms dealer in the Italian Alps, fails after an extended and mishandled chase; Stone herself succeeds in saving her operational contact, but in doing so almost reveals that she is in fact a seasoned agent secretly working for the Charter, a top-secret global cabal of peacekeepers. Returning to London, she reports to her Charter overseer -- they all have annoying code names but the boss is played by Sophie Okonedo, who I'd also usually watch do anything, but here she acts bored and confused -- and we're given a chance to catch up on some dubious exposition.

The Charter uses a unique computer with artificial intelligence that can hack apparently any digital device, and it's called "the Heart" because of course it is. Stone is suspicious of a hacker she encountered on the mission -- though the significance of most characters in the film are about as cursory as this, laughably -- and follows her to Lisbon, where teammate Parker (Jamie Dornan, again, a handsome and talented screen presence utterly wasted here) reveals he's working with the hacker and murders their team and poisons Stone with a device meant to hack and infiltrate the Heart. Then begins the second half of the film, which features more globetrotting and mindless action and betrayals and a happy ending.

Unlike comparable films like Mission: Impossible and the James Bond series, Heart of Stone has no aesthetic or stylized interest in its many locations, making everything from Portugal to Senegal to Iceland look both similar and bland. It's surprising because director Tom Harper also helmed The Aeronauts, which was visually stunning. The film treats its own plot much the same way, as people switch allegiances faster than the dialogue can maintain, and the bits of history we learn about the characters make more plot holes. Stone was recruited when she was only twenty years old, and we are never told what her training might have been before or afterward. The Heart works through the hands of its primary operator, cheekily codenamed "Jack of Hearts," who manipulates its digital screens in real space a la Minority Report or Iron Man any other too-futuristic sci-fi media that isn't meant to be realistic or contemporary. And, frankly, the overuse of yet another AI that needs to be protected and/or stopped reached its peak earlier this year with Dead Reckoning, and we really don't want more stories like this unless it can provide something more interesting or timely.

I so disliked this mess of a movie, I'll just list my other main complaints out of context, because it's time to wrap this up. Gadot's physicality isn't highlighted by fight choreography nor the cinematography. Despite attempting relevancy through its use of AI concerns, the film briefly and sporadically hints at concepts like determinism and themes of philosophy without actually engaging in those fraught discussions, and utterly fails to demonstrate even how the Heart works to save lives. Stone never questions the methods or even goals of the Charter, though she repeatedly interrogates Parker and the hacker about their desires to eliminate their enemies. And nobody -- nobody -- questions the Heart's mass surveillance as a potentially fascistic threat in the wrong hands, which it very well may be at present. And when the movie finally suggests the Charter isn't always so great, it blames its leader for her mistakes before essentially killing off most characters and setting Stone up with a new team at film's end. So the movie is not so subtly pro-surveillance state, and I guess pro-feminist, but one of those is years too late and the other is terrifyingly close to where we're headed. Let's not encourage dangerous ideas and cinematic incompetence by continuing this woefully inept IP.

Death on the Nile (2022)

Score: 4 / 5

Thank goodness Kenneth Branagh can still surprise us. In his follow-up to Murder on the Orient Express (in 2017, five years ago, can you believe?!), he returns to the Poirot pot and gives us inklings of greatness. The previous installment in Branagh's burgeoning franchise left a lot to be desired for this viewer, but any effort to make a fairly stoic, period mystery would be challenging for most major studios right now; while I disagree with his choices to make certain parts action-based and illogically melodramatic, I understand that he wanted it to be accessible and entertaining for younger audiences and to make lots of money. But I'm grateful this time that he chose an Agatha Christie story that lends itself quite well to more of those action-packed money shots.

This time, it's out of the snowbound Alps and into the sparkling, expansive Nile valley. Hercule Poirot (Branagh) is again hard at work, both in solving the titular crime -- although the body count increases dramatically -- and in dealing with his own history. We open with a black-and-white flashback scene in WWI, with a convincingly digitally de-aged Poirot getting injured and falling in love with the nurse who aided him and encouraged him to grow a large mustache to hide his scars. It opens the film with surprising tragedy and violence but also warmth and actual romance, all things that were notably missing from the previous film. It feels, this time, that writer Michael Green (American Gods, Logan, Alien: Covenant, Blade Runner 2049, and Jungle Cruise) hits his stride a bit more confidently and with good reason. His tweaks to the source material, as before, wonderfully diversify the cast, but this time it feels more earned and less forced; his other additions -- especially including Bouc (the wonderful Tom Bateman) -- are truly inspired, and I just about lost my mind when the third body hit the floor nearer to the climax of this film.

I don't really want to go over the beats of this film, because as with any mystery, half the joy is taking the journey with the characters. And what a journey this story takes, along a lush and exotic Nile river cruise in 65mm film. To be fair, most if not all of it is certainly digitally enhanced or completely manufactured, but this is big-budget moviemaking and it never feels less than ridiculously expensive. The costumes are breathtaking and shimmering in the bright lights, the champagne flows in bubbling rivers, and the S.S. Karnak, a honeymoon river boat on the Nile, shines with hardwood floors and windows for days. I noticed at least one crocodile action shot, too, and that made me impossibly joyful. 

And then there is the cast, which is as varied and beautiful and talented as any ensemble picture we've had in a while. Whereas the previous film's cast often felt underwritten and misdirected, this cast actively breathes in the grandiosity of its surroundings and leans into the glittering bourgeois atmosphere with vivacity. I was especially pleased with Sophie Okonedo and Letitia Wright as the jazz-singing Otterbournes, though the character of Bouc's mother Euphemia is lovely as played by Annette Bening. Then there are the stars, the handsome Armie Hammer as Simon Doyle and his beautiful fiancee Jacqueline de Bellefort, played by Emma Mackey, whose intensely sensual introduction in the film felt a little jarring considering the allegations of abuse and assault against him in real life. Then enters Gal Gadot as the impossibly gorgeous heiress Linnet Ridgeway, for whom Simon leaves his fiancee and gets quickly married, leaving a distraught Jacqueline to follow them hauntingly and hauntedly around the world.

Who else? The ensemble includes Ali Fazal, Russell Brand (almost unrecognizable and underutilized, thankfully), Rose Leslie, and even the achingly trenchant real-life comedy duo of Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French. It's hard to give everyone equal time, but the balance is better on the Karnak than it was on the Orient Express, even with each character mostly deconstructed to a few basic traits. At least they look pretty! And the actors do significant work to each feel sympathetic and suspicious when the screenplay gives them precious little to do. I found Mackey and Okonedo the most joyful to watch, other than Bateman of course, but this affair as a whole is more emotionally satisfying, visually splendid, and less illogical in scope and style than Branagh's previous Christie adaptation. I didn't expect to say this, but I do rather hope for more from this series, even though at the current rate they're being produced we'll be lucky to have half a dozen in total. I'm hoping for Evil Under the Sun next. 

Christopher Robin (2018)

Score: 4.5 / 5

I fully expected Christopher Robin to be an emotional disaster. Even the trailer had me weeping uncontrollably. I went in anticipating emotional brutality at every turn as the older character of Christopher Robin gets re-introduced to his stuffed animal friends and has to learn the value of imagination, friendship, and bravery. And while that is the gist of the story, it by no means characterizes the film.

What we get instead is a rollicking comedy-adventure that feels more like a real Winnie the Pooh story, albeit with real people. With the memories of his childhood suddenly thrust upon Christopher Robin's adult consciousness, Pooh awakens from slumber in the Hundred Acre Wood to discover his friends have all vanished. Of course the silly old bear decides to go find Christopher Robin to help, and he unwittingly stumbles into London. What follows is a magnificent adventure involving all the classic characters brought to glorious life by some eye-popping animation and, of course, the voice talents of the great Jim Cummings.

While the film's family-friendly adventure bits cemented themselves as wholly novel and utterly surprising in my mind, I would be remiss to neglect the other half of the story as well. While the primary story concerns the animals and their attempts to help their grown-up friend, the secondary story is far less original. Christopher Robin (Ewan McGregor) has become world-weary and distracted, neglecting his wife (Hayley Atwell, thank heaven) and daughter (Bronte Carmichael) to slave away at his work. Of course this gets preachy -- perhaps too much so -- but it is a Disney movie, after all. And as far as messages that his you over the head, this one is never going to wear out its welcome: Children are not children forever so don't sacrifice them to duties, and, similarly, embrace your own inner child before it's lost forever.

The film's warm heart contrasts nicely with its melancholic, often dark aesthetic, which breaks gloriously to amber sunlight in increasing increments as the film progresses. Heavy use of nature in the setting sometimes feels arthouse-y and even transcendent, like you might see in a Terrence Malick picture or even Into the Woods, and makes the whole impression that much more tactile and interesting. I liked this approach more than I expected, as the intricate details of the shadowed environment make Pooh's little truisms so much more poignant.

My love for this film stems from its affect, its aggressive but complicated way of stirring up emotions. My earnest hope is that we might get more Winnie the Pooh adventures as sequels -- because wouldn't it be great to see some of our favorite Milne stories mashed up together in a film featuring these magnificent stuffed animals? -- but I'm not convinced that will happen. As it is, we can enjoy this surprisingly successful standalone flick "deep in the hundred acre woods...."

IMDb: Christopher Robin