MORBIUS

 Jared Leto     Adria Arjona     Matt Smith

Jared Harris     Tyrese Gibson     Al Madrigal

            This production is interesting, which is likely an assessment below what the filmmakers were hoping for.  The CGI is good, especially in transforming the faces or Dr. Morbius and Milo, but at times when it becomes just a riot of color on the screen, it’s a bit much and dilutes any meaning filmmakers hope to convey. Jared Leto is at his usual level of excellence, always adapting to whatever character he is playing.  It was fun to see the British actor Sam Smith playing a good/bad guy, dropping his usual polite British demeanor.  Jared Harris is likewise at his usual best as the kind and humble physician.  Adria Arjona’s character as Martine spices up the screen with her good looks and noble character.

            The movie begins with Michael Morbius as a young boy meeting Lucien (whom he names ‘Milo’ right away) in the hospital for blood disorders.  They have rare diseases for which there is no known cure, which binds them together as life-long friends.  Michael becomes a Boy Wonder who already is showing a kind of promise that impresses his doctor (Harris), who arranges for him to be in a gifted and talented program in the U.S.  Fulfilling the doctor’s hope, Michael is brilliant and studious, quickly earning his doctorate at age 19.  Currently as a young adult, he is making a name for himself by creating artificial blood that can be used on the battlefield, but his hope is to create a cure for his disease.

            With the help of his colleague/fiancé Dr. Martine Bancroft (Arjona), Michael (Leto)  begins conducting research on animals, then moves on to human research.  Of course, he can’t resist trying it on himself, the consequences of which are like the boy in the childhood poem, “when he is good, he is very, very good; when he is bad he is horrid.”  The positive is that his body recovers so well, he becomes superhuman, able to fly and have phenomenal strength.  The bad part is that he requires human blood to sustain his improvement, making him vulnerable to destructiveness.  Since Michael is an ethical, thoughtful man, he must wrestle with himself when he has certain urges.  But things get complicated when Milo (Smith)—who has become his friend and benefactor and who doesn’t have the ethical grounding Michael has—thinks he is entitled to the serum.  

            Direction by Daniel Espinosa reflects his interest in mixing Marvel type of action with horror.  He successfully does it here, merging a basically honorable personality with one affected by blood thirst, and illustrating the contrast between someone like that and someone who is mostly in for a good time to compensate for the years he has lost because of his illness.  This kind of dilemma and soul-searching is uncommon for Marvel-based films but reminds me of the recent Warner Bros. produced The Batman, in which he questions himself and tries to listen to his conscience.

            Marvel fans may regard this production as the “same ol’, same ol’”, but I suggest looking at the deeper issue Espinosa is trying to put forth—that of a superpower in the hands of ethical vs. unethical characters.  I think the writers Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless achieved that goal, although it may not be obvious to many.

 

Dr. Morbius finds himself in an ethical dilemma when as a basically honorable man he develops a serum that cures blood diseases but creates superpowers as a side effect.

 

Grade:  B                              By Donna R. Copeland

ALLIED

Brad Pitt     Marion Cottiard     Jared Harris     Lizzie Caplan     Matthew Goode

          “Marriages made in the field never work”, so says Max’s superior on learning that Max (Pitt) and Marianne (Cottiard) have gotten married.  The two were partners in a successful operation that killed a German ambassador during WWII.  The statement is prophetic, but not in any way Max suspects.  Nevertheless, the couple seems very happy together, they have a child, and except for Max being called away frequently for work, their life is golden.

         The film begins with the first meeting of Max and Marianne in Casablanca, Morocco, where they have to convince everyone in the community that they are married and are uniting after a long separation. In truth they are British and French spies who are charged with a critical operation.  It’s interesting to see this introduction, as I imagine it’s a true reflection of the awkwardness that agents must experience when they are pulling off an act with someone they’ve never met before.  Marianne seems more experienced than Max—she has certainly been in Casablanca for a longer time, and since she is charismatic and very social, she has made many friends.  He doesn’t seem to mind; when he is put to the test of being a card shark in order to be invited to a party, his assets are quickly apparent.

          Things seem to float along; Max is promoted and Marianne seems entirely fulfilled with her role as homemaker and mother.  Then some earth-shattering news (for them) arrives, and Max is in a major dilemma.  That’s when the cat-and-mouse game really starts, for despite his instructions to do nothing, Max can’t help doing some investigating on his own.

        The script by Steven Knight (who also wrote Dirty Pretty Things, Eastern Promises, and Locke, which he also directed) is layered and nuanced, and the central, ultimate conflict is intriguing, both in its conception and in its resolution.  Unlike Knight’s previous film, Locke, which was an ingenious account of a man in a car on the telephone, Allied contains some artificialities in some of the scenes that detract from its plausibility, e.g., the couple’s baby being born in a building while it is being bombed, and an operation to extract information from a man in jail resulting in numerous killings).  These are unnecessary exaggerations.  It may be that the director, Robert Zemeckis, who nevertheless has fine work to his credit, and/or the producers wanted to hype up the story, which results in my reaction of “Oh, c’mon!"  But this is not a major detraction.

         Marion Cottiard carries off the role of a spy to perfection and with real heart.  At one point her character states that she is so good at what she does because she uses genuine emotions.  And that is what Cottiard does in acting; we’re drawn to the charisma and quick wit she infuses into her characters.  Brad Pitt is…well, Brad Pitt is so known to us because of all the publicity he gets in his personal life, that it may interfere with our seeing the character.  It was Brad before me the whole time rather than Max the character.  On the other hand, he is usually a very good actor, and perhaps the filming of Allied occurred during a stressful time in his personal life, which could have affected his performance.  I thought the chemistry just wasn’t completely there between Max and Marianne.

A spy thriller with imaginatively conceived intrigue.

Grade:  B                                    By Donna R. Copeland

CERTAIN WOMEN

Laura Dern   James Le Gros   Jared Harris   Kristen Stewart   Rene Auberjonois   Michelle Williams   Sally Rodier   Lily Gladstone

          Imagine an airport in which everyone is missing their connecting flights; there are some who think they have gotten on one, only to be denied, something that seems like an accidental connection that doesn’t hold.  They’ve invested in hope and are heartbroken by the outcome. This is the picture I get from Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women.  It gives us snippets of the characters’ lives without much explanation about how they got where they are or why they do what they do.  No one is particularly happy or successful, and it looks like their lives are filled only with the routines of existence.  We don’t see much passion in their lukewarm relationships, and the breakdown of one is responded to with a “Meh…” 

          The film is similar in structure and tone to Reichardt’s previous films, Wendy and Lucy and Meek’s Cutoff.  The plot moves slowly with sensory information striking (e.g., beautiful landscapes and the crunching of horse hooves on the snow) but character development less so.  Relationships are weak and restrained.  Many like this leisurely, cool approach, but I get impatient.

          Based on Maile Meloy’s short stories, Certain Women gives vignettes from the lives of three women.  Laura (Dern) is plagued by a client who won’t take no for an answer, and keeps popping up unannounced at her office.  He eventually gets so desperate he takes a hostage and has a standoff with the police.  Even after he is in prison, he is begging her to write him, “just anything.”

       Gina (Williams) is married to Ryan (Le Gros), and they have a moody teenage daughter.  Ryan has just ended an affair, but is not about to leave his wife, because he “doesn’t do very well without her.”  Gina desperately wants a new house with her own specifications, including sandstone, but one wonders whether the marriage will survive such a project.

          The strangest tale is about Beth (Stewart), a lawyer from a lower middle class family who has made good, and has a job.  But for some reason, she agrees to teach a class two nights a week on a subject of which she knows little, and has to drive four hours each way to get to the classroom and back home to show up for work the next day.  Lily (Gladstone), a ranch hand, follows students into her classroom the first night, stays out of curiosity (and perhaps a crush on the teacher), and tries to establish a friendship between them. 

          I think in some ways, this film could be entitled “Looking for [a] Mommie” because the stories have characters who seem desperate and look to a female for attention and nurturance.  The sadness is that each is disappointed—even broken-hearted—by the lack of response from the other.  Certain Women is meant to be by women, about women, and for women, but it gives a distorted view of our lives.  Surely, most women do not have such soulless lives as these characters.  Few of the women I know or have known are as disconsolate and impassive as the three women in this film.

         The performances of Dern, Stewart, Williams and Gladstone are reason enough to see this film; they evoke our sympathy and we wonder how things will turn out for them; unfortunately, we never do find out. 

A film about lonely, lonely women who seem to get no satisfaction.

Grade:  C-                           By Donna R. Copeland

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.

Henry Cavill   Armie Hammer   Alicia Vikander   Elizabeth DeBicki   Jared Harris   Hugh Grant

           Brisk, exciting, funny—The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is entertaining and intriguing from start to finish.  Solo (Cavill) pops up well dressed in East Germany in a car repair shop, and has a caustic back-and-forth with the mechanic who finally slides up from under the car.  It’s Gaby Teller (Vikander), whom the Americans and Russians need to locate her father, a missing German scientist who has been kidnapped and forced to work for an evil company that wants to rule the world by developing state-of-the-art nuclear warheads.

           Solo’s plan is to whisk her away and take him to her uncle Rudi (Sylvester Groth) who knows where her father is.  The trouble is, they are followed by an amazingly fit, persistent character in a reckless car chase through the streets, and Solo finally has a physical altercation with him.  They do manage to escape, with Gaby none too pleased to be on board.

           When Solo meets with his boss Sanders (Harris) the next morning (in a public restroom no less!), he is astounded to meet up again with the mysterious man who turns out to be a Russian spy, Illya (Hammer).  Woe of woes they are now charged by the CIA and KGB with being partners in protecting Gaby and locating Teller.  Illya will be identified as Gaby’s fiancé while Solo is to go undercover at the evil company and learn what he can from their operation, particularly its current head, Victoria (DeBicki).

         In the process of the operation, we are entertained by Illya’s ill ease in a “romantic” relationship, his deficit in anger management, and Gaby’s delight in taunting and thwarting him every step of the way, such as drinking vodka and dancing sexily in the hotel room when he is trying to concentrate and maintain his composure. 

           Meanwhile, Solo easily seduces Victoria at her lavish Italian villa on the Mediterranean, with no apparent thought about her master plan and the viciousness she is capable of.  She knows who he is when he crashes her elegant party, and is relishing the thought of besting him.

           Casting for the film was spot on, with Cavill showing the right amount of greasy charm, class, and brilliance; Hammer adopting a convincing Russian accent, and achieving the right balance in social anxiety, sheer muscle strength, and competitiveness; and Vikander managing to be sexy, a physical wonder, and always sensible.  The two men’s competitiveness is a hoot, first one then the other being one up.  Vikander fits in easily as a mediator and matching strategist.  I loved the equality among all three characters, with each making essential judgments and suggestions in carrying out their mission.  Sanders, Grant, and Kuznetsov as the CIA, MI6, and KGB agents, respectively, are exactly right as well, although I must say, seeing Grant in that role was surprising, but he did it well.

          Guy Ritchie, the director—as well as co-writer with Lionel Wigram and others—might have an especially clever, charming, and entertaining spy thriller on his record with this film.  The audience in the screening I attended was consistently engaged and responsive.  Cinematographer John Mathieson (Phantom of the Opera, Gladiator, 47 Ronin) deftly wielded the camera, managing to convey all the action in difficult-to-capture scenes, as well as playing up the luxury and elegance of place.

           The film has an exciting end, and a smooth segue into a preview for a follow-up movie.

Clever, well choreographed, and entertaining twists in an old favorite.

Grade:  B+                        By Donna R. Copeland

POLTERGEIST

--> Sam Rockwell     Rosemarie DeWitt     Jared Harris

-->

            Scary?  Yes.  Tension producing?  Yes.  Mysterious?  A little.  Poltergeist is even funny at times.  I’m not a big fan of the genre, and did not see the four previous versions (and since this is the fifth, I seriously doubt there is much in it that is original), but taken on its own merits and disregarding the others, I found it to be a pretty decent rendition of a horror film. 

            It starts out in a rather glum tone because the father, Eric Bowen (Rockwell) has just been laid off his executive level job, so the family must settle on a lower grade house in a new community.  Parents Eric and Amy (DeWitt) are putting a good face on it for their kids, Kendra, Griffin and Madison, but it’s clear that adjustments will have to be made with some effort.  Maddy starts to feel right at home almost from the get-go, and even seems to be making friends.  That is, she is talking to someone, but only Griffin notices, and he dismisses it as her simply being imaginative, and says she needs to get a better grip on reality.

            Griffin is known to be “sensitive”, so he starts complaining right away about bumps in the night, a weird clown left behind by the previous tenants in his closet, and the skylight on the roof of his bedroom showing trees swaying menacingly even when it isn’t stormy, and when it does become stormy…oh my!  Others in the family start to notice a few things, like static electricity on the stair banister, lights coming on in the middle of the night, strange noises, etc.  But things really get hairy when the parents go out to dinner (in hopes of new job prospects for Erik) and leave Kendra to babysit.  During the evening, her treasured possession, cell phone, starts doing wonky things, which prompts her to start filming with it, and she ends up witnessing the floor starting to crack as if there were an earthquake, and horrible black gunk arising out of it.

            The parents are so horrified to learn about this when they come home, they consult paranormal experts (Erik worries that if they call the police, they’ll be seen as psychotic and their kids taken away), who do indeed grasp what is happening, and when they realize how serious things are, call in the nationally known expert, Carrigan Burke (Harris).  He not only has the academic credentials, but he has scars to prove his entanglements with spirits.  By this time, Maddy is missing, and the family is distraught.  Will he be able to bring Maddy back?  And if he does, at what cost?

            I jumped and held onto my seat during the course of Poltergeist, and apparently most of the audience did too, from what I could hear.  It seems to me that Director Gil Kenan, screenwriters David Lindsay-Abaire and Steven Spielberg, and cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe have delivered on their aims of making an interesting, exciting, scary production.  Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt are two of my favorite actors, and they easily step into their roles here.  Most impressive is Jared Harris, whose performance in a myriad of different roles, attests to his ability to provide gravitas and mysteriousness in his role here as “the fixer.”

            But I have to ask, “Why was this film made?”  Is it to appeal to those who are interested in this genre and love seeing the same film over and over again (thus being a money making project)?  What did Spielberg think he could add in making another poltergeist film?  We don’t need to do away with the past; let the viewers watch the older films—that are probably just as good—and make room for creative films that will advance the industry.

Scary—but apparently not new.

Grade:  C                        By Donna R. Copeland