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.

The Aeronauts (2019)

Score: 4.5 / 5

It would be easy, in our age of alien invasions and intergalactic wars and superheroes that fly, to forget some of the most basic horrors of our world. Namely, that of the vast expanse of the sky. There's something at once comforting and terrifying in our atmosphere, as it sustains life within its strangely limited reach into the void. But we so often are limited in film to focusing either on terrestrial great heights (mountains, skyscrapers) or space itself; if we find ourselves in the in-between places of clouds and weather, it's almost exclusively within the confines of technology (an airplane). Rarely are we subjected to the great unknown of the sky, the one thing science can only marginally predict and never control.

But in the hands of such a detail-oriented artist as Tom Harper, air travel indeed becomes nothing less than horrifying. The Aeronauts tells a historical fantasy tale of two individuals sailing into the upper atmosphere: one an adventurer, one a scientist, each hoping to prove something. The scientist, historical figure James Glaisher, is played by Eddie Redmayne, and it is his intention to study meteorology in the atmosphere. The adventurer, Amelia Rennes, is a fictitious composite figure of famous balloonists played by Felicity Jones, and her struggle to overcome trauma provides the story's emotional weight. Together, the two embark on an amazing journey to the highest reaches of the atmosphere; it quickly becomes, however, a thrilling fight for survival.

The introduction consists of Amelia and James taking off in their balloon in front of a crowd of spectators. Through flashbacks, we see segments of their lives before this event, including James's attempts to gain respect for his theories about predicting the weather and Amelia's ill-fated balloon trip that ended with the tragic death of her husband. But the meat of this film takes place up in the air, as they ascend, shattering the height record while putting their lives at risk time and again. Sudden storms, freezing temperatures, and lack of oxygen threaten them as they continue to rise, along with their own egos. But the battle-of-the-sexes seemingly set up by the introduction quickly gives way to a profoundly human story about the risks we take to learn more about our place in this world.

To that end, the existential horror of being isolated in a death-defying basket tens of thousands of feet in the air hits home hard. Thanks to some amazing visual effects and stunning cinematography, The Aeronauts feels a bit like Life of Pi or Gravity in its glorification of earthly beauty. Sweeping vistas and sunlit clouds seem to be painted on the screen as if it were to be hung in a gallery, and even the scary stuff is dreamily gorgeous. But the film never lets us forget that the basket and balloon are not particularly safe, and there's always a clear understanding that a single wrong move will end in death. Its beauty pairs well with its danger, making The Aeronauts one of the most delightful and transcendent surprises of the year.

The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death (2015)

Score: 2 / 5

Sequels are hard, I don't think there can be any doubt about that, and horror sequels tend to get a worse rap than most because they are also harder to make than most. Besides basic plot (which needs to be accessible while building on the first), the creators need to either amp up the scares or the dramatic intensity (or both, if possible). Few horror franchises can do this, and even fewer succeed. After The Woman in Black (2012) signaled to the world that Hammer-produced films were back in business and that pure, traditional ghost stories -- a dying breed in the last couple decades -- could be both critically and commercially successful, I expected a series to start. But whereas the first film took its inspiration from tried-and-true source material (a book, television movie, and wildly popular stage play), I worried that any sequels would fail to match its impact.

My misgivings were well-founded. The new script leaves a lot to be desired, both in terms of dialogue and pacing and in terms of thematic integrity. Essentially, the film follows young schoolteacher Eve as she shepherds her students out of London during the Blitz. We know, of course, that children should not be within a hundred miles of Eel Marsh House, the crumbling Gothic mansion in a foggy, desolate swamp. But sweet Eve doesn't seem to appreciate that the abandoned town (complete with crazed, lone inhabitant) and the filthy, dangerous mansion are no place to hide a group of children. As we expected, things go bump in the night, shadows move in the background, and nightmares creep into reality, and though Eve begins to lose her cool, it is not until the end that she finally declares the house unfit for her charges. No shit, girlfriend.

The main problem with this film is its script, lumping exposition into a couple scenes with painfully blunt dialogue, and forgetting until the last twenty minutes or so that character development is important. None of the actors are allowed to shine much, because none are given much material to work with, and the plot's minimal drama makes the characters flat and uninteresting. I felt no sympathy for Eve because she communicates poorly, loses track of her students constantly, and repeatedly falls into sentimental stupor. Since the emotional arc of the film hinges on her, that's not a good thing for me to say.

While few horror films could wish for a better cast than The Woman in Black (Daniel Radcliffe, Ciaran Hinds, Janet McTeer), its sequel harbors its own gems. Phoebe Fox (a relative newcomer) and Helen McCrory (Harry Potter, The Queen, Hugo) do the best with what they are given, and at least manage to make distinctive character choices. Handsome Jeremy Irvine (War Horse, The Railway Man) stole the movie for me, acting as a love interest (and, unfortunately, the film's deus ex machina) with intelligence and surprising intensity in otherwise dull scenes.

New director Tom Harper (James Watkins brilliantly directed the first) seems determined to succeed in visual style where the script lacks. Though not as visually striking as the first film, he pumps in the atmosphere so much that the film feels dreamlike. In fact, some moments are so dark (in terms of color and light) that I could barely see what was happening in the background (which is of course where all the exciting things happen), even on the big screen. But Harper fails at scaring up any new thrills or chills, resorting to recycled bits from the first film to make us jerk awake. In fact, some of these "scares" had me giggle a little, simply because they were familiar, rather predictable, and poorly executed. That's not to say the film is a waste of time -- in fact, the best moments showcase the chemistry between our wonderful Jeremy Irvine and the lead girl (what's her name again?) -- but it could be better. And if you want to see a blind Ned Dennehy lunging out of the darkness in a nightmare-worthy scene, you could do worse than a visit to Eel Marsh House.

IMDb: The Woman in Black 2