"Accomplishments"
In theaters: Bong Joon Ho in sci-fi mode has never been very subtle, so don't expect that from Mickey 17. Robert Pattinson plays the title character, the rather meek 17th iteration of a 3D-printed "expendable", working for a nascent colony on an alien planet, one run by people who are quite obviously set in the mold of our current era's autocrats (Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette in grotesque roles). It's obviously one of Director Bong's Top 1% satires and takes aim at colonialism since there are native life forms on "Niflheim". The "creepers" are actually pretty cool creatures, at once monstrous and cute. Some interesting ideas and more action than was expected, but as a black comedy, it's too caustic to really get many laughs (Collette is perhaps the exception). It put me in mind of Don't Look Up - much better than that film (which I disliked immensely), but attacking the same kind of people. Mickey's unhinged action girlfriend is played by Naomi Ackie who, for the second time in less than a year, has impressed me. I hope to see her in more things. Ultimately, not among Bong's best - I often resent heavy narration in movies, for one thing - but still plenty interesting.
At home: Mike Leigh and Marianne Jean-Baptiste team up almost 30 years after Secrets & Lies for Hard Truths, in which MJP plays Pansy, a perpetually angry woman savagely haranguing everyone around her, to the point where it's actually funny. But then the third act kicks in, and I became a total mess, because there's a lot of pent-up emotion in the performance and it's all got to come to a head, if not to an easy resolution. A great, great performance. Pansy's miserable family is contrasted with her sister Chantelle's (Michel Austin) who takes reversals on the chin and have a sprightly, positive attitude. Two worlds born of the same family tree, but they might as well come from a different orchard. You can complain about everything - which Pansy does in a frankly pathological way - but you're creating unhappiness for yourself (and others) by focusing on every frustration. Explosive and devastating.
While Sneakers is a perfectly pleasant heist film with a heavy cast, what's amazing is how forward-looking it is while also very much being of its day. We're definitely in '92, reeling from the fall of the Soviet block, and all the tech required is clunky by today's standards. And yet, they're doing things with it that would be commonplace today. We'd have big computer screens and graphics, with people doing things you could probably do on your laptop, but using almost analog-looking equipment. The villain making speeches about the control of information predicts the world 30 years hence, and the MacGuffin being a super-decryption key feels very modern. Fun plot where a team you can hire to test your security is tricked into getting the passkey and spend the other half of the movie trying to get it back, making the most of the heist genre. Robert Redford is just okay, honestly, but Sidney Poitier, Mary McDonnell, River Phoenix and Dan Aykroyd (playing a version of himself) are fun. David Strathairn is the MVP of the team as a blind man with superhuman hearing. Oh, and Ben Kingsley plays his villain as if he's in a comedy, which is delightful.
An acknowledged (and very obvious) inspiration for modern chase films like Drive and Baby Driver, Walter Hill's The Driver (1978), itself, traces its own lineage to Melville's Le Samouraï, with its man of few words protagonist. This is actually the film's weakness - the male and female lead (Ryan O'Neal and Isabelle Adjani) are extremely expressionless characters, which limits our emotional investment. Beautiful people, but we're not in Alain Delon territory. Bruce Dern, as the cop who means to set up the getaway driver no one has ever caught, is the antagonist and not our anchor. But you're not here for the actors, you're here for the car chases and stunts! And on that score, The Driver delivers cool, extended POV chases where our man is both chased and being chased, with a fun demolition derby vibe as well. And it looks like the actors are in the cars at least some of the time - hair rising! The plot also yields rewards, with some nice twists and turns in the duel between the two men. Surely one of the great chase films, and yet widely underappreciated.
The frustrating thing about William Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A. is how, despite confounding expectations in certain ways (layering in a bleak 70s outlook on a very 80s cop film), it leans wayyyy too far into genre clichés (a cop on the edge - CSI's William Petersen - has his partner killed on the eve of retirement) for it to feel in full control of its subversions. It's got a big showpiece in an extended chase that transfers The French Connection's to gridlocked Los Angeles, chaotic and dirty, and some stylish flourishes, though the latter can seem a bit precious, like the font-play on the date stamps. (Also, why set it around Christmas if you're never going to show even a single decoration?) At the time, its noir moments must have been shocking to audiences. They still are, and might be at odds with the Wang Chung score, though Friedkin lets important moments play without much music (perhaps he was saddled with something "hip" by the studio). But having seen a lot of the neo-Noirs that came out in the next decade, I'm more interested in the counterfeiting plot (fairly rare for crime pictures) and the rest of the cast, including Dean Stockwell and young Willem Dafoe and John Turturro.
Never
mind John Woo's 1989 classic, there was a film called The Killer in
2024, another in 2023, and starting the trend, yet another in 2022. THAT
"The Killer" is a Korean action flick with a plot rather like the
superior The Man from Nowhere - I couldn't believed they even
REFERENCED that film - but instead of an adorable little girl protected
by a hit man, she's a teenage brat you will have a hard time caring
about. The hitman is pretty cool though, walking through John Wick
gauntlets sipping his morning coffee. Could do with less torture, but
Jang Hyuk IS badass in the role, going after the Millennium's typical
action villains - human traffickers. As per the Korean tradition, the
film looks gorgeous - slick and colorful - but the music really lets it
down. I found myself actively annoyed at the generic technobeats and
rock guitars sitting too low in the mix. Seemed to sap a lot of energy
out of the action scenes. Too bad, because they're quite good. Rather
brief at first - the killer is so efficient - but it's worth getting to
the longer set pieces, including a very strong finale.
Japanese
crime films of the 1960s have such great titles, don't they? Takashi
Nomura's A Colt Is My Passport is no exception. The cool as hell Jo
Shishido (Branded to Kill, Detective Bureau 2-3) is a hitman who becomes
victim to Yakuza politics after a successful assassination, and will
need all his savvy to save his own and his loved ones' lives. The music
is right out of a spaghetti western, which certainly fits the memorable
final shootout, but generally, the tone is procedural. And I love that.
The film shows shows us many bits of business in a way that makes us
understand the thought processes and techniques of the professional
killer. It also works as a Noir, where post-war gloom adds a layer to
the characters' own sense of doom. Nice female lead in Chitose
Kobayashi, who is effective as a woman whose Yakuza adjacency makes her
want to piggyback on Shishido's escape. But that's by no means a sure
shot out of town.
From the World Cinema Project![Saint
Kitts and Nevis] Michael Jai White isn't in his prime anymore, but he
can still kick some ass. Sadly, The Island is for the most part a
cliche-ridden B-actioner. White is an L.A. cop who returns to his
tropical island home to track his brother's killer, a cartoonish villain
whose shtick is essentially killing his own men for the slightest
mistake. That's not the flex he thinks it is. He also seems to "own" the
island and can commit crimes with impunity, but the one cliche the
movie refuses to indulge in is the crooked police force that turns on
our hero. Very suspect given the circumstances that local police
WOULDN'T be bought. Oh well. Shot in a flat, television way, The Island
only really lifts off in the final reel, with an action-heavy climax and
some cool badass dialog. It's almost worth getting through the first
two acts to get to the finale, but only almost.
[Guadeloupe]
Perhaps just another Luc Besson female assassin movie, Anna
nevertheless has the goods thanks to a topsy-turvy plot that doubles
back on itself often to show you what's happening behind the scenes. I
find Sasha Luss a bit limited in terms of acting, but she can deliver
the Wick-inspired action as a Russian girl roped into the KGB, but
quickly disgruntled about broken promises of freedom after 5 years of
service. Will she take matters into her own hands and go rogue? Or are
there other options? Limited or not, Luss is well supported by Luke
Evans (on the Russian side) and Cillian Murphy (on the American side),
but most of all by Helen Mirren as her KGB handler. Mirren is great here
as in all things, and basically makes the movie for me. What a total
legend. Objectively, the star here is the plot's twists and turns, but
those star performances and action sequences don't hurt.
[Dominica]
The kind of documentary where the director performs some kind of stunt
(like Supersize Me), Uncivilized has film maker Michael Lees return to
his home island of Dominica to live six months alone in the forest, to
see if Man has lost touch with something innate and crucial. You can
tell he's done his research and isn't putting himself in foolish danger,
but honestly, it's the kind of thing that's only truly interesting if
things go sideways and the film maker stumbles on a story other than
what he set out to tell. And through an island-wide disaster that drags
the population down into his personal quest back in time, it definitely
does. The turning point is also quite shocking and, ultimately,
affecting. And through the experience, Lees does discover why humanity
strove to release itself from primitivism. His tone is a little cheesy,
at times, but his intentions are good and his story more interesting
than planned.
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