STREAMING SF FILMS ON TV: CHOOSE WISELY

It seems like forever since I’ve posted here in Spacefreighters Lounge and a lot has been happening. But unless you’re a regular listener of my screen review podcast My Moviehouse My Rules, you’ve probably missed my recent takes on some big SF films available for streaming on your home television screen.

Let’s start with the film causing the most excitement, WONDER WOMAN 1984, directed by Patty Jenkins and starring Gal Gadot and Chris Pine. (By the way, this review contains spoilers, so if you hate reading the details of a film’s plot, you may want to skip out now. But I’m about to save you some money on HBO/HBO Max and two-plus hours of your time so you might want to read on.)

So much was wrong with this movie I hardly know where to start. How about with the premise? An ancient artifact is unearthed which acts as a kind of Alladin’s lamp for all who touch it, granting the greatest desires of their hearts. 

A failed businessman (Pedro Pascal—GAME OF THRONES, NARCOS) steals the artifact from the museum where Diana (Wonder Woman) works and proceeds to use it to take over the world, but not before both Diana and her insecure colleague Barbara (Kristin Wiig) have wished upon the “Dreamstone” without thinking things through.

Diana’s heart’s desire, of course, is to have her greatest love, Steve (Chris Pine) returned to her. The problem is he must take over the body of some poor shlub to make that happen. (As my daughter said, “What the Quantum Leap is going on here???”) Barbara, on the other hand, desires only to “be like Diana.” Only she doesn’t have the core values that we see instilled in the young Wonder Woman early in the film on her home island of Themycira.  Barbara ends up as the supervillain Cheetah, an “apex predator” to rival the superheroine she once admired.

In the meantime, the businessman, Maxwell Lord, believes he’s found a way to outsmart the consequences of using the stone, which always exacts a price from those who wish upon it. He becomes the stone itself—yeah, I know—and people wish on him. He becomes ever more powerful until the story comes to a head when he gains access to a worldwide broadcasting system which allows him to have everyone in the world wish at once. As you might imagine, contradictory wishes make for chaos. Wonder Woman must save the day!

But, oh, no! The stone has demanded the price of Diana’s superpowers in return for granting her wish. She is gradually growing weaker. (And if you watch any superhero movies at all, you know this is a theme. Love, attachment to a mate, is a sure way either to get that mate killed or to lose yourself as a hero. Something about sex draining your energies. Who thinks up this stuff anyway? Oh, yeah, right! 40-year-old virgin fanboys.) So, she and Steve must give up their dream of being together—again. (If you remember, Steve had to die in the first Wonder Woman movie.) Diana renounces her wish, gets her powers back, kicks Cheetah’s ass, then finds a way to use the worldwide broadcast network to get everyone to renounce their wishes and stop the chaos.

It even works on Maxwell Lord. The sight of his son, lost and alone in a world gone crazy, is somehow enough to bring him around and he renounces his wish and lives happily ever after. Really? There are no consequences for him? It was bad enough this character was so derivative—echoes of WALL STREET’s Gordon Gecko or a recently twice-impeached high official or any other soulless loser you’d want to name—but that he was so easily redeemed and left unpunished went against my grain. What are superhero movies for if the bad guy doesn’t get his just desserts?

And no consequences for Steve and Diana hijacking that guy’s body for a week? We see the guy on the street later; he seems fine. Just a Goldilocks and the Three Bears moment—somebody’s been sleeping in my bed (and wearing my clothes and taking my body for a spin)?

Then there were the mistakes of moviemaking that made this film hard to watch. Jenkins apparently thought the 80s represented “the height of Western civilization and society” and wanted to give Wonder Woman a chance to deal with the villains of that time. Seriously? I lived through the 80s and I can’t think of anything to recommend that era. The hairstyles and clothes were awful; with a few exceptions the music sucked; fueled by conservative politics, individual greed, unemployment, and interest rates were all sky-high. In this movie we’re forced to relive all of that, including and especially the spectacle of Chris Pine in horrible 80s clothes.

The first Wonder Woman movie introduced us to a thrilling heroine with a fight choreography all her own. Diana has little opportunity to do any of that in this movie. The action scenes are few and far between, giving Gal Gadot no chance to show us what she can do. Even the big fight scene with Cheetah is disappointing. Mostly, Diana is reduced to saving kids, and in one laughable scene she nearly squashes some tykes getting them out of the way of an armored vehicle they should easily have seen coming miles away down a dusty road. Couldn’t mom have just yelled, “Hey, you kids, get out of the damn road!”

But I guess you get the picture. I wouldn’t waste your time on this one unless you just have nothing else to watch. This one’s a No-Go.

 Jones and Clooney in THE MIDNIGHT SKY

For a better SF home night at the movies try THE MIDNIGHT SKY. This Netflix Original film is directed by George Clooney and stars the usually drop-dead gorgeous actor as a haggard, bearded astrophysicist waiting out the end of the world in an isolated research station in the Arctic. The scientist is suffering from terminal cancer (much like the world, which is being swallowed by radiation from some unnamed disaster, likely a nuclear war). His one last remaining task is to warn off a spaceship returning from a successful mission to explore a previously unknown moon of Jupiter where life has miraculously been found. (Okay, that requires a leap, but why not? Let the CGI guys play.)

Clooney calls the movie a cross between GRAVITY (the Oscar-winning space film by Alfonso Cuaron in which he himself starred) and THE REVENANT. (You know, the one where Leonardo de Caprio is almost murdered but survives by hiding in a dead bear. Mark L. Smith wrote the screenplay for both THE REVENANT and THE MIDNIGHT SKY.). But to me it has more parallels with an old-school film someone is shown watching part-way through this one: ON THE BEACH, starring Gregory Peck. In that film, the U.S. and Russia have let loose the nuclear dogs of war and the last outpost of life is Australia, waiting while a cloud of deadly radiation makes its way around the globe toward it. That film’s director was the redoubtable Stanley Kramer, and it provides some of the most unforgettable science fiction images of the Cold War. I think Clooney doesn’t do such a bad job with the same emotional feels here—the isolation, the fear, the despair—both as a director and as an actor.

THE MIDNIGHT SKY has some plot twists that give it extra interest, including flashbacks utilizing actor Ethan Peck (Gregory’s grandson, known for playing Spock in CBS All Access’s STAR TREK: DISCOVERY) as a younger version of Clooney’s character. But it does require some suspension of disbelief to think we have a hidden treasure trove of lush life on an as-yet-undiscovered Jovian moon out there just waiting to rescue humanity. Even if that humanity’s Adam and Eve would be David Oyewolo and Felicity Jones. (Yes, the supporting cast is great—it also includes Kyle Chandler, Demian Bechir and newcomer Caoilinn Springer as Iris, a young stowaway on the Arctic research station. Clooney can command just about anyone he wants when he’s making a movie.)

The film might be a little slow—all the weight of SOLARIS without the “scenery” if you take my meaning—but it is atmospheric and thought-provoking, like the best SF films should be. You’ll like it if you like Clooney, Peck, any of the rest of the stellar cast or post-apocalyptic SF in general. Definitely a Go.

Check out the rest of my podcasts (New Screen Reviews with Old School Attitude) here, or on my Facebook page for My Moviehouse My Rules with new posts every Wednesday!

Cheers, Donna

 

 

 

 

 

 

TOMORROWLAND: BACK WHEN THE FUTURE WAS BRIGHT

“When I was a kid,” says George Clooney’s character Frank in TOMORROWLAND, “the future was different.”

Think about that statement for a minute and see if you don’t agree. Frank was eleven years old in 1964, (just my age, as it happens) a hopeful child genius crashing a contest for amateur inventors at the World’s Fair in New York. In those days we believed science and good old American ingenuity could solve any problem. The future was bright. There was nowhere to go but up—and out, into space, into the oceans and every hiding place of scientific mystery, chasing a vision of a better world.

We accomplished some of the goals of that hopeful time. We landed on the moon. We signed the Civil Rights Act and the Environmental Protection Act. We invented personal computers and cellphones and medical imaging and all manner of toys. 

But even as we did this, our hearts were cut out. We lost our leaders to assassination, our sons and brothers and fathers to war, our prosperity to economic instability. And somewhere along the way we lost our hope. The future changed.

TOMORROWLAND’s villain, Mayor Nix of the much-reduced city of the future, played to the outrageous hilt by Hugh Laurie, says eloquently that our culture has embraced dystopia. We wallow in our misery, rather than seeking a way out of it, because it’s easier, he says. Wallowing requires nothing of us.

On one level, TOMORROWLAND, directed by Brad Bird (THE INCREDIBLES) with a screenplay by Bird and Damon Lindelof of LOST fame, is a fast-paced SF adventure film with a teen protagonist and a pretty high fun quotient. Britt Robertson plays Casey, the teenager with a social conscience and enough scientific curiosity to kill ten cats who is “recruited” to join the wonder-filled futuristic community of Tomorrowland in another dimension. 

Too bad the community that once existed is now only a distant memory, allowed to run down under the glowering leadership of Mayor Nix. Problem is, Nix was overwhelmed by the prophecy of Earth’s doom, a prophecy revealed in a calculation made by the grown-up boy genius, Frank. 

Frank was exiled for his trouble and now monitors things from his farm/fortress in upstate New York. A grizzled curmudgeon, he doesn’t work well with others, especially perky teens seeking entrance to the hallowed Tomorrowland. The chemistry is great between the man who has lost hope and the girl who can’t help but spread sunshine, and even Frank must take notice when Casey causes a minute change toward the positive in his doomsday calculation.

The second half of the film has Frank, Casey and the android who recruited Casey with her last Tomorrowland “pin” finding a way into the next dimension to save Tomorrowland from Nix and the world from doomsday. Action ensues, all of which is entertaining, if not entirely credible. I have to say my favorite scene was one in a “collectible” shop with two bad guy owners who try to kill Casey, but not before we learn one thug’s name is Hugo Gernsback, and we get glimpses of a model of the LOST IN SPACE robot, Robby the Robot from FORBIDDEN PLANET and various spaceships and aliens.

But the central point of this film is deeper than one would guess from either the previews or the mediocre reviews that seem to miss it entirely.  And that is the one I started with. The film references an old Native American proverb which was adapted for this story. Every person has two wolves inside that are constantly fighting. One is hope, the other despair. Which one wins?

The one you feed.

The future holds any number of challenges—global warming, economic disparity, the possibility of world pandemic, environmental destruction, geologic instability—and we can choose to face them with fear, doing nothing. Or we can choose to take them on in a spirit of unity and strength, of positivity and hope. And do something.

Some part of that eleven-year-old still lives in me. I choose hope. How about you?

Cheers, Donna

GRAVITY SOARS

Gravity—the force that attracts a body toward the center of the earth, or toward any other physical body having mass. (Oxford American Dictionary, Pocket ed., 2008)

By now unless you yourself have been circling the Earth at high altitude, you’ve heard the buzz about Alfonso Cuaron’s triumphant space adventure film GRAVITY.

   

Even if you have only a passing interest in the movies, you’ve heard the techies rave about how the special effects will change the way films will be made from now on.  You’ve read the critics’ glowing reports of Sandra Bullock’s incredible performance in the role of Dr. Ryan Stone, a medical engineer on the International Space Station forced to tap hidden reserves of strength when disaster threatens to leave her marooned alone in space.

I’m here to tell you it’s all true.  What you’ve heard is not hype.  Run, do not walk, to your nearest multiplex and see this film.  See it on the biggest screen you can find, in 3D if you can possibly tolerate it.  No fan of science fiction, no follower of the space program, no dreamer of that day, no matter how distant, when humankind will escape the bonds of this planet and fly free among the stars, can wait to see this film on DVD.  You would truly do yourself, and your imagination, a disservice to miss it.

As many films as I have seen, I’m not a student of the technical aspects of filmmaking.  Beyond a few basic principles, I don’t really care how the directors and the cinematographers, the editors and the special effects crew make their movie magic.  I just want that magic to appear seamless and, most of all, real.  In this day of colossal special effects, we most often simply suspend belief in the theater as huge monsters trash cities with abandon, superheroes perform death-defying feats, things blow up with regularity and even the stupidest movies involve phenomenal amounts of destruction and mayhem.

What Cuaron has done is both more difficult and so different as to be in an entirely separate category.  He has set his cinematic story in a real environment, one with rigorous demands of lighting, physicality, set “geography”, choreography, even sound.  In other words, he has had to recreate the very strict limitations of space for his players.  And make it look real to his audience.  That he succeeds—brilliantly, spectacularly, in ways that make your jaw drop—is nothing short of a miracle.

For now, Cuaron is not talking about how he did it.  Good for him.  Let other filmmakers guess how he had Medical Engineer Stone (Bullock) and Astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) first floating, then tumbling and spinning out of control in weightless space.  Let jealous rivals lose sleep over how objects swam around Bullock in the cabin just as they would in space, and when she cried, how the tears simply balled up at her eyelashes and floated off into the air in front of her.  Let cinematographers everywhere wonder how he got that hard-edged, diamonds-against-velvet light so familiar to all of us from NASA photos throughout his film.  I only know Cuaron’s audience, of which I was a part, was riveted.

If GRAVITY had had only the game-changing special effects to offer, it might have ended up as one of those cult movies film school students watch over and over as inspiration.  Or as a favorite at SF cons.  But this is one of those rare films born out of the emotional heart of the story, with a strongly written backbone and the excellent acting skills of both Clooney and Bullock to carry that story along.

The tale goes that Alfonso Cuaron’s son Jonas had written a script called DESIERTO, about someone lost in the desert.  The director liked its themes of desolation, loss and the struggle for survival against great odds.  But what better place to play out those themes than the great “desert” of space?  He and Jonas wrote the script for GRAVITY together, and as all good writers should, piled on the dangers for their hapless first-time-in-space heroine.

Clooney’s Kowalski is everything we’ve been conditioned to believe an astronaut should be—wise-cracking, calm, competent, brave, self-sacrificing.  His steady voice is Stone’s anchor in the chaos of the crisis that envelops them in seconds and throws her into panic.

But it is Bullock’s Dr. Ryan Stone who is the emotional focus of the story and the heroine of the piece.  She has lost her tether to Earth long before debris from a fractured satellite rips the space station apart and makes her fight for survival imperative.  Her journey back to life within herself is just as fascinating as the literal trek she must make to get back to Earth.  Bullock and the Cuarons have taken care to give us that emotional story; the special effects are only there to make the story believable.  In a good film, that is the way it is supposed to work.

GRAVITY opened to the biggest box office in history ($55.6 million), a tribute to the advance buzz on the film and the popularity of its stars.  But an interesting footnote to that piece of news is that its audience skewed notably older. Entertainment Weekly reports audiences the first weekend were 59 percent above the age of 35, 54 percent male, 46 percent female.  That could, again, be due to the drawing power of its stars, but reports also showed better numbers on the second day of the weekend than the first, meaning word of mouth was at play.

New York, are you listening?

Cheers, Donna