Thirteen Lives (2022)

Score: 3 / 5

As a filmmaker, Ron Howard is fascinating because he vacillates so wildly between big-budget blockbuster fare and offbeat, heart-of-gold dramas. His movies are meticulously researched, even when they sometimes sacrifice realism for melodrama or spectacle. But you can almost always tell he's at the helm just because of his unique energy as manifested in the visuals, the pace, and sometimes the thematic material. Thirteen Lives is a bit unusual for him in that I forgot for most of its runtime that Howard was directing. Its urgent, grounded feeling -- and its presentation almost as a documentary -- is exciting from him, because it reminded me that Howard can put the prestige aside and tell a damn good story.

You'll probably remember the media frenzy from summer 2018 when a soccer coach and his team of a dozen adolescent boys were trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand for eighteen days. It wasn't that long ago, it's been told in several news specials and documentaries already, and its miraculous ending make it a readily familiar tale. It's quite a different matter, however, to be part of a dramatized version of those events. Howard has some trouble handling the "behind-the-scenes" scenes, in which a large international team of rescuers convenes to problem solve the rescue efforts, and that takes a lot of time and energy to establish all the characters and motives and concerns and why they matter. He's not helped much by the screenplay, which doesn't offer us much new information nor much emotional intrigue; writer William Nicholson (Everest, Gladiator, and many more) can't decide what parts of the story are most interesting, so he includes a little bit of everything.

Meanwhile, Howard seems determined to force thrills and chills out of the movie by focusing most on the flooded caves. The incredible sets and impressive real SCUBA work by the actors are wonderful, and add arresting authenticity to the film. Underwater cinematography and sound mixing isn't always beautiful, but it is always eerie and claustrophobic here, and really puts us in the Tham Luang Nang Non cave with the boys and the rescuers. I was very glad not to be swamped with unnecessary survival-type subplots, and the long middle part of the movie keeps us tightly focused on the physical and mental toll the six-hour dive through winding, pitch-black caves and tunnels took from the divers.

And while the cast is awesome -- led by Viggo Mortensen, Tom Bateman, Colin Farrell, and Joel Edgerton -- they aren't really playing fully realized characters so much as flat archetypes meant to move the plot along and remind us of the real-life heroes' names. Howard smartly tries to sidestep the "white savior" narrative by frequently reminding us of the Thai Navy rescuers, the Thai soccer coach, and even the local farmers who destroy their own rice fields to reroute incoming water away from the cave system. The closest thing to a complex character in the film is the lame duck governor, who pops in a few significant times to navigate the awkwardness of handling catastrophe while in political power while also being keenly aware that he's one his way out and is uniquely positioned to take full blame if the boys aren't rescued.

My problem with Thirteen Lives isn't in its production design or the dedication of everyone involved; it just isn't a memorable cinematic experience. I watched it about a week ago, and almost none of it has stuck with me, except as some visual reminders of the real-life story over four years ago. Howard's film didn't really teach me anything about the real heroes or survivors, about the geography of the labyrinthine caves, about the international response efforts. It felt like dramatized news reels and comparatively dull reenactments of what should have been riveting action. But if you're in the mood for straightforward, hard-hitting drama that reminds us about an amazing rescue mission, Thirteen Lives isn't the worst way to spend an evening.

Crimes of the Future (2022)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Its opening sequence reads like some of the auteur's best work. A little boy in a nasty, dirty bathroom, curls up beneath the sink and begins eating. But this is not a vampire from The Brood or an offspring of The Fly; he eats a trash can. Not its contents. Literally the can itself. It's weird, certainly, but not quite horrifying. That adjective comes into play a moment later, when the boy's sad and disgusted mother enters and kills the boy. A brutal way to start a film, and all the more intriguing because there is no exposition, no rationale, no history. And, noteworthy, we never revisit the scene in the film.

Cronenberg is of course the master of body horror (or "the body beautiful" as he calls it), and Crimes of the Future is very much a return to form after two decades of drama and history and thriller films (almost all of which are also excellent). From his twisted mind, we're introduced very quickly and without any panache to a world in the vaguely distant future that feels grim, grimy, and altogether nasty. Think a less urban Blade Runner aesthetic. Humanity has apparently begun to mutate in this polluted waste of a world so that some humans continuously grow new organs, and most humans no longer experience pain. As a result, of course, new occupations have arisen. In what seems to be his fantasy of the middle of the end of humankind (it's not the beginning because of the world-weary nature of the proceedings and the characters, and it's not the end because humans are apparently generally handling the world fairly well), there has sprung up quite a market for human organs. Technicians have developed biological machines to help humans sleep and eat more organically (as if those weren't two of the most organic functions of humans anyway).

As different people have evolved differently, there seems to be an intense stigma specifically against humans who have evolved to the point of being able to eat plastics. Hence the opening scene. These considerations could make for a film with massive scope, somebody like Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich might make a global disaster movie; somebody like Steven Soderbergh or Ridley Scott might make an epic that is also intimate. Cronenberg, in his signature style, makes a distinctly political premise markedly antipolitical in execution, meaning that this movie that indirectly references the plastics that have polluted our world and that already exist within human bloodstreams and takes it to a logical conclusion: if saving the earth (and humanity) that was is less and less likely, as it is, perhaps we need to look forward into adapting our world to accept and cater to this plastics behemoth we've created.

It's frighteningly accessible to our pandemic world, too; learning to live with the constant threat of annihilation and how to not only survive but use that threat to somehow better ourselves. Enter Caprice (Lea Seydoux) and Saul (Viggo Mortensen), an ex-surgeon and performance artist respectively, who kind of hate what they do but fill a particular need and niche for themselves and their audience. Saul continuously grows new organs (and yes, the idea of increased and unwieldy cancer problems as a result of pollution and plastics is present), and for a profit, they perform surgeries in front of a crowd to remove those organs. It pushes Saul's body to horrific limits, opening the body to new possibilities as the film tells us; since pain isn't really a concern anymore, the body can be molded in much more violent ways than we see today with body modifications and performance/body art.

Where the movie makes its most intriguing (and, for me, horrific) turn is that these surgeries are notably erotic. Calmly wicked, subversive and raw, the new openings in Saul's body provide ample locations for penetration; several scenes in which Caprice slides her fingers or hand inside feel uncomfortably sexual. Perhaps it's this reality -- all captured with a sensual eye by the camera -- that entices Timlin (Kristen Stewart) to fall in love with the artistic duo. She's a bureaucrat gopher in the National Organ Registry, investigating and keeping tabs on new organ growths, which naturally brings her into a potentially compromising situation with Saul. On the other hand, the plastic folk are almost anti-sensual, as plastic (and toxic) in their interactions as in their diet, led by a mysterious and inscrutable Scott Speedman (I don't recall his character's name) who is determined to prove the government's stance on human evolution is wrong.

There is a lot of heady material here, and many lenses can be applied to the film to tease out its many ideas on everything from evolution to sex, from environment to government, from social corruption to economic failure. And yet the film places equal -- if not greater -- emphasis on the subtle, mostly nonverbal, human experience of all these things, as if to say, "this is our reality now, if exaggerated, so what do we really feel about it?" Alarming, calming, horrific and beautiful, this is Cronenberg at his typical best, and while it's confusing and cerebral stuff, it's also a fascinating and fun time at the cinema. 

Falling (2021)

 Score: 3 / 5

Willis jolts awake on the plane, and we immediately know there will be some trouble. He's an old man, clearly being looked after by his middle-aged son John, and he seems confused. Lurching down the aisle, he grumbles curses and insults at the other passengers and shouts for his wife. John hurries after him, trying to hush him and get him to the washroom without too much disturbance. Though most of the passengers and flight crew watch, some with bewilderment and fear (rightfully so, these days) and some with knowing sympathy, none get up to help. They reach the washroom and Willis lights up immediately. His wife has been dead for years, and smoking hasn't been allowed on planes in many, many years. Willis is losing his mind.

It doesn't help matters that John, played by Viggo Mortensen doing his best work in a decade, is gay. A jet pilot who lives in sunny California with his husband and daughter, John has flown to his childhood home in New York to collect his aging father. It's a desperate move, one which challenges logic but hinges on our empathy, and we can't help but feel this plan is more than a little naïve. John plans to take Willis away from his isolation (and horses) and find him a new home on the west coast, where he can be closer to what family he has left. But dementia won't let Willis have a peaceful exit from life, nor will the demons now locked in his mind.

The relationship between father and son, we learn, has never been very good, even before John revealed his sexuality. The film runs along two plotlines, the present domestic drama and the past, as Willis grows increasingly violent and abusive to his family. The episodic scenes cut back and forth through time, especially when John's sister Sarah (Laura Linney, who always deserves more screen time) shows up with her kids; it is through her interactions with Willis that we learn the extent of his bigotry and cruelty to a family he has never known how to love. He explodes at random times, seethes at others, consistently and aggressively unpleasant for everyone to be around.

Sure, Willis doesn't understand how his son could be gay, but he also doesn't understand his grandkids dying their hair different colors or wearing new fashion styles. He spews vitriol and slurs at people of other races, even while in international-inspired restaurants. All women are whores to him, worthy of his disdain as well as his lust, perhaps most unabashedly the nurses caring for him in the hospital. Played by Lance Henriksen doing what I'm ready to call his best performance ever, Willis is the stuff of nightmares. While he's easy to hate -- profoundly easy -- there is a pitifulness to him not unlike that of King Lear; as the film drags on through harder and harder to watch venomous battles between characters, we recognize that his hatred isn't specifically about the people around him, but just directed at them. His rage is deeper, founded in the age when other old white men say America was great, and his operatic outcries are against the dying of the light; he is determined to not go gently into that good night.

John, on the other hand, is too much of a good guy, here. Endlessly kind and patient, he thoughtfully responds -- rather, often chooses not to respond -- while bending over backwards to care for his demented father. His character is less realistic than idealistic, but it should be remembered as a gold standard for how to handle situations like this. It helps that Mortensen, who by all accounts is as generous and soft-spoken in real life as many of the characters he's played, imbues John with so much unspoken pain that he doesn't need to verbalize his precarious and thankless position, as the caregiver in a less emotionally intelligent film would.

But this isn't The Judge or anything close to Still Alice in terms of sentiment. Despite its tendency to touch on hot-topic issues and deeply traumatic themes, the movie never leans into those impulses, choosing instead to let them pile up into an unspeakable elephant in the room. Which is true to life, to be sure; you can't hardly have ideological debates with people suffering from dementia, especially those in your own family. But dramatically, this hamstrings the film to the point that it pivots from being a relatively universal conceit to a grotesquely idiosyncratic chamber piece. And that would be fine, except that the characters are far too broadly written, too one-note and un-dynamic, to support a psychologically honest character study.

Then again, quite unusually for this subgenre, Mortensen (also acting as a first-time feature director here, which I don't think I mentioned previously) never asks us to see Willis as anything but a horrible man. Even though this makes for bleak viewing, I fully respect this as a storytelling choice because it puts the onus for kindness on John, yes, but also the viewers. We're challenged at every step to not yell at the old man, to turn off the movie and switch to nicer fare. We're forced to be patient and introspective in ways nobody is on social media. Like John, we can't just cast him out, ignore him, or "cancel" him because he's still here, a consequential force that is present and in vital need of attention.

The melodrama -- paired as it is with dark memories -- marches onward like a dirge toward its inevitable climax. As honest and inspired as many lines are, and they are, I was left feeling that I had looked into someone else's life rather than gained any wisdom, guidance, or insight into my own. I'm not sure what the purpose of loading this much sentiment into a movie is, if I'm left only wondering what I'd do in the given situation. Inevitably, when John unleashes his pent-up feelings about Willis, I found myself wondering why it took so long to get here, and what on earth conclusion could be remotely happy afterward. Spoiler alert: there is no happy resolution, but rather a cleverly fleshed-out denouement that matches the mother's metaphoric criticism of the father-son relationship earlier in a flashback scene. It's all very smart, but it's also a sorely taxing two hours to endure.

Green Book (2018)

Score: 4 / 5

If there was ever going to be an updated Driving Miss Daisy, I'm glad this is it.

The year is 1962 and Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen) lives happily as a bouncer in NYC, living in a small apartment with his wife (Linda Cardellini), two sons, and a large Italian family who come and go as they like. When the Copacabana is closed for renovations, Tony looks for work elsewhere; he's booked an interview with famed pianist Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) as his driver on a concert tour through the Midwest and Deep South. "There are gonna be problems," he half-jokes in his interview, before his future employer reveals that Tony was chosen for his skills as a bouncer far more than any driving ability.

Before long, they're on the road, and it's here that the strengths of the lead players blossom. Mortensen and Ali perfectly match each other as unlikely companions who, in turns, build each other up. A few insults fly and lots of casual racism graces the screen, but we see that the two men never actively or deliberately seek to tear each other down. This is the sort of iron-sharpens-iron bromance modern masculinity desperately needs (and, I think, desperately wants). It never sacrifices women to its humor or desires, and barely blinks when one party is discovered to be queer. Caught between two masterful performances by veteran actors, we are swept up in the characters -- if not quite the story -- and delivered to a holy place.

And that's what I think the film is really up to. From its opening scene, the picture glows with what I initially thought was a quasi-nostalgic aura. The sort of good ol' days that some in our society want to go back to and "make great again." While the film does get occasionally dark as the pair traverse Jim Crow-dominated Carolina and Alabama, it never really depicts the horrors of the era. This might be off-putting to some, and arguably rightfully so. After all, thousands of black people were murdered, tormented, ostracized, fired, and, and, and during this period of time, and if this was the only film to depict the history, it would of course present an inadequate view of the whole. But the warmth, I'd argue, is the warmth of its two leading men and the transformative friendship they shared, now shared with us.

Despite what some may see as the film's downfalls -- including the dramatization of the men's relationship, their personal lives, and the realities of Jim Crow America -- it's a film distinctly hard to shake afterward. By the end, it's just one of those earned catharses, a solidly entertaining piece with a lot of heart that bleeds for all the right things. Like La La Land, it might do exceptionally well come awards season simply because it is so entertaining; unlike that lauded picture, though, this one actually draws attention to the problems in our culture rather than ignoring them.

IMDb: Green Book