“A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” - The magic of time and place.

I like weird. Weird music, weird books, and definitely weird movies. The Lobster, The Fountain, Labyrinth. The weirder, the better. Well, maybe not The Shape of Water weird. I have a line - fuzzy as it may be - and that movie crossed it. On the other hand, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey landed right in my sweet spot.

Life is all about doors. The doors you open and walk through and those you don’t. Journey asks its two main characters to open and walk through a bunch of doors and for us, the audience, to follow them. And the doors are so weird.

David (Colin Farrell) walks through a door into a very large room containing two rental cars. Two people sitting behind a desk urge David to come all the way in. The woman (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) peppers him with questions while the man (Kevin Kline) casually observes and agrees with her. In the end, she convinces David to rent the GPS to go with the 1994 Saturn he will be borrowing.

David makes his way to a friend’s wedding where he meets Sarah (Margot Robbie). The two of them have a very weird conversation, the wedding ends, and they separately leave the wedding. Shortly into the drive home, the sultry GPS voice asks David if he would like to go on a big, bold, beautiful journey. At first, David is confused that a GPS is having a conversation with him. But his life is quite dull, especially at that moment, so he answers yes. The GPS directs him to a fast-food rest-stop and tells him to order a cheeseburger. Question, dear reader - what would your answer to the GPS have been?

Sitting in a booth and eating his food, he spots Sarah two booths away. Weird. Sarah joins David, they chat for a while, then they walk to their respective, identical 1994 Saturns. More weird. When Sarah’s car won’t start, GPS tells David to offer Sarah a ride. He does. This is not weird, just polite. After some time and distance have passed, they reach a new destination. They walk into the woods and find a bright red door standing alone. With caution, they approach the door and David decides to walk through. At this moment, we are seeing the door from the side and we do not see David pass through the frame. Sarah joins him and the two find themselves in a lighthouse David once visited. Excellent and so very weird.

The rest of the film unfolds this way, Sarah and David walking through random doors into different moments of each other’s lives. And they aren’t just watching these moments play out and reminiscing about them. These are interactive moments where David and Sarah are their younger selves (or their parents) and can make different decisions. Where they can say things they wanted to say or not say things they did say.

But it’s not a Mr. Destiny thing where their present is altered if they make different decisions. These are all introspective interactions. They get to see how that moment plays out if they choose a different action, but when they walk back out the door, their lives are the same. These are learning moments for them and not just about themselves.

Don’t forget, this is also a romantic story. That initial wedding conversation is David and Sarah’s meet-cute. The door adventures are their dates. They even go through the cliched event that separates the two, though in their case it’s not an inane misunderstanding. All of this is clever character building while also developing their relationship with each other. And we even get to see them sing a little bit.

 

We watch a relationship blossom in real-time over a couple of days, while witnessing the kind of introspection, revelation, and vulnerability that comes over the course of a long-term partnership. A life partner sees you at your worst, relives your stories of pivotal formative moments, and holds your hand as you navigate through those latent emotions. This movie illustrates a wonderful allegory of how a lifelong partnership intertwines both past and future growth, and how the accidental elements of time and place can intersect to create magic.

In addition to being a big fan of weird, I’m also a big fan of Farrell and Robbie. Both have plenty of experience with weird, as anyone who has seen The Lobster or Birds of Prey can attest to. And both of them deliver very satisfying and convincing performances. Even if you aren’t a fan of the weirdness, you’ll be a fan of David and Sarah by the time they return their Saturns.

Rating: Don’t ask for any money back and stay weird.

Thirteen Lives

It’s award consideration season, so here’s my consideration.

Synopsis

A cave rescue mission.

Writing

On June 23, 2018, twelve boys and their coach were trapped in a flooded cave system in northern Thailand. Given the recency of the event, extensive coverage at the time, and the known outcome, the movie practically writes itself. The only challenge is writing something to convince the audience not to skip to the end of the story. William Nicholson achieves this by focusing his screenplay on the lead divers, the harrowing details of the cave’s makeup, and eventual rescue plan. Until seeing this movie, I had no idea what the divers did to rescue the boys and I still have trouble believing it worked. In short, the story grabbed my full attention.

Acting

Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell absolutely nail their performances as divers Richard Stanton and John Volanthen, respectively. Between the two, I give Mortensen the edge. His Stanton is bluntly honest, apologetic, and in despair about the situation, sometimes all at the same time. There is no better example of this than when Stanton and Volanthen return after initially finding the boys, and Stanton expresses his feelings at discovering the boys alive (they found the boys ten days after they initially went missing). Joel Edgerton as diver/anesthesiologist Richard Harris deserves an honorable mention, delivering a performance rivaling Farrell’s, but doesn’t appear in the film until deep into the second act.

Directing

Ron Howard washes off the stink of Hillbilly Elegy to create a compelling survival film in Thirteen Lives. Armed with Nicholson’s screenplay, Howard humanizes the divers and fleshes out a story that, to the vast majority of us, was only a few headlines. Howard handles the various aspects of the event with the respect everyone involved in the rescue deserves.

Technical

Throughout the film, Howard splices in cave schematics to make sure the audience never forgets how truly difficult an operation was the rescue. Plenty of attention is also paid to the various equipment used during the operation, as well as visuals of various parts of the cave. The cinematography elicits feelings of claustrophobia, sometimes to the point where the audience literally holds its breath. The music and sound underpin these sensations to create a tension that lasts throughout the film.

So?

Mortensen and Farrell could get acting nods, but like I said, I lean towards Viggo. Howard might crack a top twenty list for directing, but not a top five this year. I always respect the difficulty of adapting real events into movies, but the screenplay is in the same boat as Howard’s directing. If anything, cinematography has the strongest case for a nomination. 

“The Batman” - I only work in black. Or really, really dark grey.

Batman has had quite the adventure throughout his Hollywood career. Starting way back in 1966 with two dudes wearing their underwear on the outside of their pants, there have been ten live-action films. After that ridiculous (even at the time) depiction, 1989’s Batman embraced the idea that Batman is dark. As we’ve seen far too many times, young Bruce Wayne watched his parents get murdered in front of him, so of course he should be depicted as dark. Which means the movie should also be dark. Unfortunately, Joel Schumacher didn’t get the memo, which led to the franchise turning into an absolute joke with Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, featuring more neon than all of Las Vegas. Schumacher also reminded us why Robin sucks.

Christopher Nolan understood the assignment, giving us two great movies and one mediocre movie, all of which took the darkness to a new level. While Zack Snyder kept most of the darkness for the DCEU, we’ll just pretend the DCEU doesn’t exist. Yes, that includes the Snyder cut of Justice League, which I refuse to watch because Snyder’s movies reminded us that Snyder sucks. Incidentally, Snyder sucking is how we got to today’s The Batman, a movie that is another reboot of the caped crusader. And if you thought The Dark Night was dark, wait ‘til you get a load of The Batman.

(SPOILERS - They’ll be so minimal you’ll barely be able to see them.)

The film starts off with nine-year old Bruce Wayne watching his parents get murdered in an alley. Just kidding. Like with the new Spider-Man films, we don’t have to watch Bruce’s parents die for the umpteenth time. Instead we are simply told that it happens. We also don’t have to watch adult Bruce (Robert Pattinson) become Batman, learn the origin of trivial things like the bat-signal, or watch how any of the villains became villains. They all just are. Thank you, Matt Reeves (director/writer/producer).

The film actually starts with the murder of the Gotham City mayor and Batman narrating about criminals being afraid of the shadows whenever the bat symbol is shining in the night sky. The most important part during the narration isn’t what we are seeing or what Batman is telling us, it’s the slow, ominous music telling us the kind of movie and Batman we’re about to experience. When Batman finishes beating up a gang of hoodlums on a subway platform (preventing them from assaulting a train passenger), the music hammers home its final note while Batman growls that he is Vengeance. This guy definitely knows how to properly wear his skivvies.

Perhaps the best decision by Reeves was to lean the story more into Batman as the world’s greatest detective. With the investigation of the murder of the mayor underway, Detective James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) has enlisted Batman to help. Gone is the idea that Batman is helping Gordon clandestinely, as Gordon walks Batman through a phalanx of cops at the crime scene. At this point, we know Batman has existed for two years, operating as a vigilante, but surprised to see how openly. It’s a very cool scene, setting a tone of uneasiness between the cops and the duo of himself and Gordon, leaving us to wonder when and how that situation will go sideways.

It is quickly revealed that a serial killer calling himself the Riddler (Paul Dano) is responsible for the murder. Left at the scene are clues and riddles specifically for Batman to solve. This continues throughout the film as the Riddler kills more prominent Gothamites, always leaving something for Batman to continue the chase. As the investigation moves along, we are asking the same questions as Batman and Gordon. What do the victims have in common or how are they related? What is the Riddler’s true end game? Batman’s investigation leads us to the introduction of the other major characters in the film. Carmine Falcone (John Turturro), the biggest crime lord in Gotham, Penguin (Colin Farrell), a lieutenant to Falcone, and Catwoman (Zoe Kravitz), a waitress in a night club run by Penguin. We know all of these people are somehow connected to the Riddler’s killings and the first third of the film expertly puts us on the edge of our seats in anticipation. Of course, then the film straps one of Jigsaw’s death traps to one of the victim’s faces and we recoil into the back of our seats.

Hey, did I mention this film was dark? I won’t spoil the details of the different killings, but at one point in the movie, my exact thought was “wow this reminds me of Se7en.” My next thought was that I was glad I didn’t bring my nine-year old son to this film, silently thanking the film for being three hours and screening on a school night. But, yeah, it’s dark. Really. Really. Dark.

As I said, Batman needs to be dark. It’s no mistake that the most well-received films in the franchise are the dark ones and the most hated films in the franchise are the comic-book-y ones or the Snyder ones that are only visually dark.* But it can’t just be dark for lighting purposes (looking at you Zack). The darkness has to have a purpose and The Batman puts that purpose in a death grip that is equal parts story and character building. In fact, The Batman goes so dark that nobody, not even Alfred (Andy Serkis), can be presumed a safe bet to emerge from the film unscathed.

(* Side note: the 1966 film has a 79% approval on Rotten Tomatoes based on 33 reviews, only one of which was actually written in 1966. That approval rating is almost certainly borne out of nostalgia for a show that lasted just two years rather than for actual quality.)

The immediate question I have now is what is going to happen to the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) films? Warner Brothers and DC never had much of a plan for the DCEU to begin with, but rebooting Batman (and the Joker, for that matter) as dark and gritty, borderline horror seems like an obvious sign that they have zero plan or faith for a coherent DCEU. There is also the problem with the latest DCEU films being decidedly comic-book-y. It’s kind of hard to see the current Harley Quinn and Shazaam existing in this retooled Batman world. Well, maybe Harley.

As for The Batman itself, it’s easily the frontrunner for best film of the year. I admit I was very skeptical about Pattinson as Batman, but he had me believing in him before the halfway mark. Add in equally good performances from the rest of the cast, the slow burn as the investigation was allowed to run its course (rather than be squished into a two-hour timeframe), the great music and visuals, and the perfect amount of action as to not overwhelm the other elements of the film but still be plentiful. If not for a stray storyline about Bruce maybe - but it’s never clear and dropped by the end of the film - being bankrupt, the film was as close to flawless as any I have seen. Which is saying something for a film this dark.

Rating: Worth double what you paid for it and triple if you skipped the Snyder Cut.

“Voyagers” - No one can hear you conch in space.

I hate Lord of the Flies. I hate the book, I hate the 1963 film adaptation, and I hate the 1990 film adaptation. If I had known Voyagers was Lord of the Flies in space, I might not have wanted to watch Voyagers. They got me by hiding it behind sci-fi and by hiding the actual plot of the movie so nobody would recognize it for what it really is. The synopsis on IMDb is simply “A crew of astronauts on a multi-generational mission descend into paranoia and madness, not knowing what is real or not.” That is decidedly not Lord of the Flies and is an extremely misleading description of Voyagers. Especially the part about astronauts. The “astronauts” (and those quotation marks are as sarcastic as I can make them) are literally a bunch of children. See, that is why I hate Lord of the Flies.

(SPOILER ALERT)

The premise of the movie is the Earth is dying, so a massive ship is filled with supplies and children and fired toward a newly discovered habitable planet with the hopes that the children will continue on with the human race. Why children? Because the trip will take eighty-six years. Yeah, no, but why children? Because they have been genetically engineered to be the best of the best of the best and their babies will be even better. Sure, fine, but, seriously - If there are only children on board, who is flying the ship or maintaining the ship or delivering all the babies that these children are going to have mid-flight? On an eighty-six year flight, even the children are going to die, so why doesn’t the mission start with adults raising the children? I got nothing. You are right; that is really dumb.

To be fair, there is one adult on the ship, Richard (Colin Farrell). I am pretty sure Richard is a psychologist, but he also might be a mechanical engineer. Or a botanist. Or a pilot. Actually, I’m not sure what his profession is, but I am sure that he was not originally supposed to be on the ship. He literally begs the mission commander to let him go along because he has nothing on Earth to stay for (dead family), says he will never miss things on Earth, and feels like a parent to the thirty kids being sent on the ship. So, yeah, they really were going to send a bunch of children into space. But don’t worry, they took some classes on Earth where they move hexagons on a touch screen, so it’ll be totally fine. They’ll definitely know how to deliver and raise their own children.

Another ingenious decision by the mission planners was to secretly inject a drug into the kids’ water that removes their will to challenge or question anything. Or have emotions. Or want to have sex. You read that right. Super kids bred specifically for this mission, raised in isolation with only each other and Richard, and given non-stop education to get them ready for the most difficult mission ever, were still not trusted to make good decisions by the same adults that ruined the Earth. Again, what is Richard’s job?

Everything you’ve read so far is explained within the first five-ish minutes. Once the ship is launched, the movie skips ahead ten years into the mission, when the kids are now late teenagers-ish. Their age is really unclear, which is going to lead to some really awkward scenes. It doesn’t take long for these exceptionally smart (and really bored) kids to discover they are being drugged. And being teenagers, the movie decides to treat them as dipshits rather than the brilliant minds we were shown ninety seconds earlier. Two of them, Chris (Tye Sheridan) and Zac (Fionn Whitehead), decide to stop drinking the water and convince a few others of the same. Soon, Zac and the others are acting like immature little shitheads, and Zac goes from innocent to would-be rapist in two seconds flat.

This being Lord of the Flies, the one adult can’t be around for very long. Once Richard is out of the proverbial picture, the kids are on their own and with teenage hormones running the show. You guessed it - awkward. When they aren’t fucking or wrestling, they’re laying around in their underwear not maintaining the ship. This is the level of contempt director/producer/writer Neil Burger has for teenagers (or Millennials), even when they are his own characters initially developed as near-perfect creations. Okay, Boomer.

By the time I realized what I was watching, it was too late to turn back and there was still a lot of movie left. Suffice it to say, I was not enjoying myself. One of my biggest pet movie peeves is asshole teenagers for the sake of being asshole teenagers. What is worse about this one is they were set up as exceptionally good people who would absolutely understand the stakes. Instead, they whine about probably dying on the trip so why should they bother doing anything? And that goes on for almost the entire freaking movie. The only thing that kept me going was trying to identify what represented the conch and waiting for Piggy to die. And I never did figure out what that damned conch was. Did I mention how much I hate this fucking story? Now it’s trying to ruin science fiction.

Rating: Ask for all of your money back. Even my English teacher (retired) father-in-law hated the story enough that he showed The Goonies to his students rather than subject them to Lord of the Flies (I am not making that up).

“The Gentlemen” - Travel well indeed.

Guy Ritchie needed a win. After the success of his two Sherlock Holmes films in 2009 and 2011, people largely ignored the very good The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015), King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) was an unmitigated disaster, and the Aladdin remake (2019) was a pile of shit that was only successful because certain nostalgia is as potent as heroin. Taking that nostalgia as a hint, Ritchie decided to go back to his roots by making another film in the same vein as the two that put him on the map (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch). Full disclosure: I have never actually seen Snatch or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. I probably should. Now that I have seen The Gentlemen, I have an idea what those other two are like.

One filmmaking technique I go back forth between hating and liking is starting a movie by showing us something from the middle or end of the story. The Usual Suspects employs one of the best uses of it and John Wick easily has one of the worst. Context is key. It works in The Usual Suspects because we want to find out the identity of Keyser Soze. It utterly fails in John Wick because we know John is not going to die. The Gentlemen starts with drug lord Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey) sitting in a pub, talking to his wife, Rosalind (Michelle Dockery) over the phone. Behind him, a man with a gun walks up, the camera cuts to the table in front of him, then we hear a muffled gunshot and see blood spray across the table. Immediately, two thoughts race through your brain. One - did they just kill Matthew McConaughey? Two - there is no way they just killed Matthew McConaughey. Right?

You think he'll mind that we used his Lincoln for this?

Long ago, my wife taught me one of the cardinal rules of filmmaking - if you didn’t actually see the death, it didn’t actually happen. That is not to say characters are not killed off-screen sometimes. It is to say that an off-screen death can always and easily be undone. The Gentlemen puts this idea front and center. On one hand, McConaughey is the lead in the film, and he is Matthew McConaughey, so we immediately doubt that he is dead. On the other hand, he is playing a drug lord, so it is very conceivable that the story ends with his death. At this point, we don’t know if Pearson is good or bad or even know the fact that he is a drug lord (unless you had that spoiled for you by trailers or IMDb). All we know is the guy from the Lincoln ads appears to have taken a bullet to the brain.

In order to sell the mystery of the opening scene, the story is presented to us in the form of paparazzo Fletcher (Hugh Grant) and Pearson’s right-hand man, Raymond (Charlie Hunnam), walking us through the events leading up Pearson’s shooting. All of the events are the result of Pearson deciding to sell his marijuana business to American drug lord Matthew Berger (Jeremy Strong) and another aspiring drug lord, Dry Eye (Henry Golding), wanting to get in on the action. Fletcher has a bunch of incriminating evidence of Pearson and Raymond’s operations, including plenty of associated crimes, and decides to blackmail Raymond for £20 million. Raymond patiently listens as Fletcher recounts events and we, the audience, are treated to a very entertaining film.

He is definitely dead. Unless he isn't.

Plenty of credit goes to Ritchie, as this genre is his wheelhouse, but the film really works because of the performances. Hunnam and Grant are wonderful together, bantering and toying with each other throughout the film. Golding and Strong provide great contrasts in character to each other and Pearson, all three of them giving us a different type of character. Colin Farrell, playing a boxing coach whose students accidentally get them all caught up in the mix, steals every scene he is in. Dockery makes a case that she is the real power behind Mickey’s throne, standing out as the alpha in her every scene. And then of course, McConaughey. Pearson is an Oxford-educated, well-spoken kingpin, who is every bit as intimidating when calm as he is when his emotions break free. He is every bit the guy driving the Lincoln, as well as that same guy in the unaired commercials that murders passing-lane cruisers that cut him off while texting.

More often than not, I am not a fan of gangster flicks. Usually, it is films like The Irishman or The Departed or American Gangster that turn me off to the genre. Films that take themselves way too seriously; where violence seems to be the key focus of the film. Basically, movies that are no fun whatsoever. I gravitate towards the ones that are either very clever or have a sense of humor or, best of all, both. The Usual Suspects is the epitome of clever. Pulp Fiction has a sense of humor and is clever sometimes, though really tests the audience with the rape dungeon (and let’s be honest - the primary appeal of Pulp Fiction is much more the format of the movie than the story it tells). Over the years, I have found that British gangster films are my favorite because they are almost always clever and funny and The Gentlemen is definitely both. I am still patiently waiting for Sherlock Holmes 3, but The Gentlemen is worth the delay.

Rating: Do not ask for any money back unless you are still annoyed that Ritchie wasted our time with Aladdin.