"Annihilation" Struggles To Be Something More Than Trippy S**t

Alex Garland makes it very difficult for me to review his movies.  Of course, he doesn’t care, nor should he (of course, perhaps you don’t, either, for that matter, nor should you).  The noted screenwriter of flicks like 28 Days Later, Dredd and Never Let Me Go has now directed two features himself, both of which have challenged me to like them despite my personal taste.  2014’s Ex Machina was hailed as a new-generation sci-fi masterpiece, and while I agreed with that label in general (see my own review for more detail), it was hard for me to totally love the film because I found its premise slightly offensive morally.  Well, Garland has gotten another muddled emotional/intellectual reaction out of me with his latest directorial effort, this month’s Annihilation, but for entirely different reasons.  

Based (somewhat loosely) on a novel by Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation tells a story of a meteorite crashing into an idyllic scene—a lighthouse situated on the coast of a swampy national park.  Two years later, a strange, ethereal barrier has spread across that part of the land, looking like a floating but structured mixture of oil and water, shimmering in purple, blue, and yellow, standing like a wall between our own reality and the unknown.  We’re told that teams of mostly military personnel have been going through the barrier, called the “Shimmer," for at least a year, but the expeditions have been unsuccessful in returning any information, as they all disappear without a trace.

The character upon whom we focus is Lena (Natalie Portman), a biology professor and Army veteran, whose husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) was part of the last military team to enter the Shimmer.  She hasn't heard from him, or anything about him, for a year, and given the secretive nature of his mission, assumes that he is dead.  Just about the time she seems on the verge of accepting his apparent death, Kane reappears inside the house.  He seems something of a blank slate, though, as he doesn't remember how he got there, what or where his mission was, or what happened while he was on it.

Events take them to a secret base called Area X, just outside the Shimmer’s boundaries, where Lena learns about the Shimmer, the meteorite, and the purpose of her husband's mission.  Lena decides that the only chance to learn what happened to her husband is to go into the Shimmer with the next team of explorers and find the source of its creation.  What she and the rest of the team find therein will be beyond anything they expect, and may change life on this planet beyond their ability to comprehend.

I really want to like this movie, and I actually do like all of its individual parts - it’s the collected whole that leaves me feeling unsatisfied.  Garland has, much like he did in Ex Machina, crafted a visually stimulating sci-fi experience, and told a story that will provoke lots of thought and discussion.  His choice of cast and locations, along with visual effects that do not overwhelm any of the scenes that use them, are all excellent (the sight of plants growing in the shape of human beings, for example, was both beautiful and inherently unsettling).  All of the actors/actresses deliver fine performances, and Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury’s haunting, minimalist score greatly enhances the feeling of mystery inside the Shimmer.  

What frustrates me is how despite intentionally abandoning the notion of directly adapting the source novel, and merely telling a story based on how he “remembered feeling after reading it” (his words, not mine), he hasn’t come up with a story any more enjoyable to follow than VanderMeer did in the novel.  That's not to say that the story, the science, or the final point of the film doesn't make sense - quite the contrary, the concept of DNA alteration, and different forms of life possibly modifying our world to become a better fit for it is fascinating.  After all, if there is life beyond our planet, couldn't we also assume that such life would be beyond our understanding of life?  Does an extraterrestrial entity even need a goal or a reason to do what it does?  What if it just does those things because it’s supposed to?

I understand that we as an audience are meant to interpret the story how we each see fit and discuss the various interpretations amongst ourselves, and I have no problem with that.  I suppose how I’m left feeling is that, much like I did with the novel, we don’t learn enough about any of the people involved in the story to really care what happens to them.  The team that accompanies Lena into the Shimmer is made up of four other women who, like her, are as one character puts it, "damaged goods," but none of them are explored in any depth, so their ultimate fates really don’t carry any emotional payoff when those points in the film are reached.  Sure, the lack of emotional investment may have been a conscious choice of Garland’s, as a means of keeping the narrative an intellectual one, but I can only speak for my own reaction, and I was left feeling somewhat empty.

Given the opportunity to provide an explanation for what has happened or what has been learned over the course of Annihilation, one character offers what is perhaps the only rational response: "I don't know."  This is something of a rarity for a mainstream science-fiction film, and while I admire a film that wholly embraces the Unknown and the Uncertain, and certainly admire Garland’s filmmaking skill in crafting this one, I do wish he’d made me give more of darn about it.

"American Assassin" doesn't score a kill, just inflicts a flesh-wound

The movie industry has been trying like mad to give the public another spy-franchise for almost two decades now. Three and two-thirds of the five Bourne flicks have been pretty good, but films starring Tom Clancy’s and Clive Cussler’s properties haven’t been able to catch hold long-term, and nothing else series-worthy has really even made it into production (those God-awful Taken movies don't count as "spy" movies, either). American Assassin almost suffered the same fate, as author Vince Flynn's estate was on the verge of regaining the film rights to his Mitch Rapp character, since nothing had been done with it.  The property had been in various stages of development for years, but Lionsgate Studios finally managed to get something done in the nick of time to keep the rights.  Did legal haste make cinematic waste in this case…?

The Maze Runner’s Dylan O’Brien plays Rapp, who proposes to his girlfriend while they’re frolicking on a beach in Spain.  Wouldn’t ya know it, that’s the exact moment a bunch of Islamic terrorists shoot up the beach, leading to some excessively melodramatic moments in which the girlfriend practically dies in Mitch’s embrace.  Eighteen months later, Rapp has become consumed with vengeance against those responsible for her death, and dedicates every waking moment to finding them, infiltrating them, and killing them.  The tragedy changes him from a guy who looks like he just walked off the set of "Teen Wolf" to a guy who looks like he's been living in the woods feeding off grubs and tree bark. Just as he's about to do everything he's been training himself to do, the CIA, led by Deputy Director Irene Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan) intervenes and takes him away.  Although he’s a loose cannon who can't take orders well or work with a team at all, Rapp is placed into a Black Ops program run by prickly Cold War vet Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton), who is prepared to chew up and spit out the new kid.

Though this setup is considerably generic stuff, eventually revealing a scheme to sell some enriched plutonium lifted from an abandoned Russian facility to the highest bidder, as if straight from the playbook of James Bond, it’s the initial character development for Rapp that provides the biggest letdown.  He’s unhinged and out of control, losing his temper and hurting a fellow sparrer at a gym, before negligently wandering in front of bullets at a shooting range.  He’s so focused on his personal vendetta that his own well-being is of no concern; Rapp is the kind of unappealing, unlikely anti-hero who would be dead or behind bars before the film even starts. This is something of a conundrum for a project that tries earnestly to appear serious and severe.

Yet that feigned sincerity is another problem with such a storyline. There’s little levity, virtually no comic relief, and lots of brooding and self-pity.  At times, the film devolves into a mindless actioner, which is perhaps where it is most comfortable, but even when it arranges a bit of commendable suspense, there are other faults that develop.  Most notable is the main villain, who remains a few steps ahead of the protagonists, simply because he’s supposed to.  Then it’s up to Rapp to accidentally save the day – not through impressive investigatory skills or level-headedness, but with the help of pure luck. No one uses intelligence to outmaneuver the opposition; everyone happens upon fortunate scenarios or are given specific opportunities to overcome calamities. “You let emotion cloud your judgment; never ever let it get personal,” orders Michael Keaton’s character, but then Mitch proceeds to conduct himself solely through uncontrollable emotions and deeply personal motivations, for which he realizes haphazard victory after victory.

All that having been said, I found the movie watchable primarily because of O’Brien’s and Keaton’s performances.  In his first truly adult role, O'Brien is very watchable, and is even believable at times, but still not TOTALLY believable as a guy who can whup an entire room of trained killers.  But hey, Matt Damon got better as Bourne went along, and O'Brien has the same potential.  Awesome right off the bat is Keaton, of course, going full-on Nicolas Cage-style bonkers as Hurley, who puts Rapp through Hell, takes torture like a man on vacation, and isn't afraid to take a literal bite out of terrorism.  Keaton is having way too much fun for the oh-so serious American Assassin, but his over-the-top portrayal is a welcome breath of fresh air into this stale script.

I can’t tell you American Assassin is a good film, but I won’t tell you it’s an awful one, either.  As the ending credits rolled, I told myself that I found it “okay.”  It could certainly have been made better with more time and more money, but ain’t that true of most movies? The excellent writer/ director Ed Zwick left this project early on in development, and I wonder how much better if would’ve been if he’d stayed on.  The film manages to rise above its modest $33 million budget for the most part, but the lack of true tentpole-feature funding starts to show about the time third act begins, as the necessary computer-generated imagery to depict what we’re shown during the climax is very, very below par.  

American Assassin has a title befitting of a movie made in the 1990s. Visualize it with an older cast - Steven Seagal starring as the guy taking on some of the worst the world has to offer.  Jon Voight as the CIA director. Ted Levine as the older recruit gone rogue. American Assassin is essentially a 1990s action movie, but devoid of the adrenaline and overall fun factor some of those films carried. Casting the oh-so-young O’Brien in so “serious” a role is meant to accurately portray the character as just-starting-out, and the sequels of which Lionsgate Studios dreams would show him aging and progressing through his career.  Logical thinking, in my opinion - I also hope they find better screenwriters for those sequels, too.

The latest Tom Ford design - "Nocturnal Animals"

Lost love is “lost” because not only is the love gone, but you are misplaced as well, changed into something you weren't before, and it may be years before you realize it. When the crying is done, you move on - you adjust, you grow, you heal.  Maybe you’ll end up meeting someone better than that awful person who ripped up your heart - someone who makes you feel alive and free, someone who makes you forget and forgive the pain your last love caused.  Or instead, maybe you’ll slowly slip into despair, longing and regret.  Maybe you’ll sit and wait for that text, or that e-mail, or that phone call… all but certain that none of them will ever come.  Maybe you’ll sit and wait and watch the door, hoping he/she will come through it.  Maybe he/she will even be smiling when you next see him/her… or maybe they won’t.

Nocturnal Animals, the second film from Tom Ford, the fashion designer who so impressively made his foray into filmmaking with A Single Man seven years ago, is based on a novel that bears little resemblance to this movie.  Ford discovered the novel "Tony and Susan" by Austin Wright and contemplated how to actually adapt the book into two different films. The more he churned the story in his mind, however, his imagination began to formulate something that resulted in this offbeat, non-linear tale of a woman who believed she was growing into a better person by casting her first husband aside, then comes to realize over the next decade how guilty she was of hurting him and destroying her own happiness.

Beginning with images so incredibly silly, yet so awfully uncomfortable to view, Ford instantly sets a tone that will make discovering all the traits of these characters, both the “real” ones and the characters in the novel-within-the-movie, all the more impactful.  The images are part of a conceptual art exhibit hosted by Amy Adams' Susan, a gallery-owning high roller in the Los Angeles art world.  Susan is beautiful and haughty, living an extravagant lifestyle funded largely, we assume, by her husband Hutton, played with born-into-privilege knowingness by Armie Hammer, and thoroughly, thoroughly miserable.  After her opening, Susan gives herself a nasty paper cut opening a package: the manuscript of a first novel by Edward Sheffield, Susan’s first husband.  She’s disturbed by the package and the accompanying note, telling her that he has dedicated the novel to her.

Susan soon settles in with Edward’s novel.  Without warning, we cut to Susan’s visual interpretation of the book.  This story-within-a-story begins with Tony (Jake Gyllenhaal) driving his wife, Laura (Isla Fisher), and their daughter, India (Ellie Bamber), to a weekend home.  They’re driving through the night on barren Texas roads, and in an instant, things go very, very wrong.  It isn’t fair to describe what Tony and his family endures, as to do so would diminish its horror.  I will say that this scene of roadside terror is one of the most frightening things I’ve seen on film since, maybe, Blue Velvet. This has nothing to do with physical violence, as none is shown, but the scene takes its time tormenting us.  It is so realistic, and it could happen to any of us - you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time and your world is forever altered.

Susan is so disturbed by the novel that the almost subliminal questions she’s been having about her life begin to make their way to the surface.  Is this text some fictionalized version of some horrific event that happened in her and Edward’s own shared past? Her memories of life with Edward then present a third line of narrative, with Edward (also played by Gyllenhaal) and Susan as young and idealistic lovers.  He encourages her to pursue art - not as a business, but as a calling.  She wants him to be more responsible, or realistic.  She dreads turning into her materialistic upper-crust mother, but he’s not so sure she really dreads it.  Emotional damage ensues, but nothing like the stuff that happens in Edward’s novel. This is a movie that, among other things, trusts the viewer to make sense of it, or maybe demands the viewer make sense of it.  All the threads pull together, we presume, when Edward and Susan (whose current life continues to turn to rot as she makes her way through Edward’s novel) agree to meet again in “real life.”

The triumph of the film is how the individual stories are kept in the air so beautifully by Ford, and how the individual actors can convey so much about their jaded, miserable characters with a minimum of exposition (Armie Hammer’s Hutton, away on business, is cheating on her so blatantly he’s almost too bored to hide it anymore).  Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the scumbag who terrorizes the novel’s “hero” shows a side of his ability audiences have never seen before, and of course, Amy Adams is her usual spectacular self.  Michael Shannon also achieves a career high (and an Academy Award nomination) with his dry but enigmatic portrayal of a Texas lawman with nothing left to lose.

The final scene is one that, I presume, intends to have viewers debating as they leave the theater, and I admit that I would have welcomed such a discussion had I not been alone when I saw the movie.  I suppose that without the benefit of a human sounding board for my reaction, I found Nocturnal Animals to be a reminder of how much the loves we leave behind form us in such ways that continue to shape our outlook on life.  Whether those past loves were good or bad, happy or sad, we will have suffered damage of some sort along the way, and even inflicted some of our own.  Seeing such a simple lesson in dealing with adult emotions told in such a powerful fashion may have been a tad uncomfortable, but it made for a movie that is definitely worth seeing.

Why "The Martian"? Because... Science!!!

Every time I sit down to do one of these essays about a film from Sir Ridley Scott, I feel like I’m obligated to inform the reader that he or she may need to take my opinions with a grain of salt.  My fandom of Sir Ridley’s work is well-documented, and I wouldn’t blame anybody if they said my objectivity in reviewing his movies may be questionable. I like to believe that I can be reasonable enough, however, to acknowledge that he’s had some “misses” over the last decade (cough… The Counselor… cough… Prometheus… cough... ), but even those misses have had things about them to love and/or admire, though, and those qualities keep me eagerly anticipating whatever he may do next.  

Thankfully, with The Martian, Sir Ridley has hit one out of the proverbial park, and has produced a film that certainly ranks right up alongside his best work.  It is a great combination of survival story (see a guy figure out how to grow potatoes in his own poop!), detective story (wait, that photo and this photo must mean somebody’s still moving down there!) and heart-tugging rescue story (can they catch the guy in a space suit moving faster than speeding train?).

The Martian is based on the debut novel from former software engineer Andy Weir, written out of his love for all things science, and his admiration of the men and women who practice it and utilize it to explore the universe. The story is of astronaut/botanist Mark Watney (played with great charm by Matt Damon), who is left for dead on the surface of Mars when his mission is scrubbed because of a violent storm.  Left with supplies that will only last six weeks, he must find a way to not only communicate with Earth and hope a rescue mission can be sent, but also to find a way to produce enough food, water and breathable air to last the three or more years it would take for that mission to save him.  

While there is certainly enough of the Robinson Crusoe-type stuff one would expect to find in such a story, there is enough of the subsequent activities on Earth depicted that the movie is not just a retread of Cast Away set in space.  NASA comes to realize Watney has survived and struggle to find a way to deal with that knowledge and plan a course of action.  Astronauts make plans, engineers at Jet Propulsion Labs struggle to implement them, NASA administrators work to make them happen, all under the pressure of knowing Watney may very well starve to death before they can get to him. These portions of the film are filled with characters just as interesting (in their own ways) as Watney, and the movie is fortunate to be filled with such wonderful actors as Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jessica Chastain and Michael Pena in these roles, all of whom do fantastic jobs of creating believable characters with clear motivations, all with the seemingly-limited screen time they have.

Okay, sure, we all know Mars’ atmosphere is way too thin to actually produce a storm strong enough to endanger any manned mission there (or at least those of us who didn’t sleep through eleventh-grade science class know - you all know you you are…), but any enjoyment of a movie must require some suspension of disbelief, and this great story makes it easy for us to do so.   The genius of The Martian is its handling of what is, by its nature, the most technical of human endeavors and keeping it on a level the layman can not only understand, but enjoy.  What made the novel so incredibly interesting - it’s descriptions of the methods Watney used to engineer the solutions to his problems - could have been the very thing to doom the movie adaptation for general audiences, but Drew Goddard’s script does a fantastic job of feeding us just enough science-lingo to explain what Watney is doing without bogging us down in minutia (“I’ve done the math,” an engineer explains to an administrator at one point, “it checks out”).  The entire narrative thread of the movie is propelled by this problem-solving, which is a pretty novel thing for a movie in today’s age of the big-screen shoot-’em-up spectacle that relies on action set pieces to move from one plot point to another.  

The focus of the story, though, is Watney, and Matt Damon gives a us stellar performance.  He tends to be a “quiet” actor, steering clear of roles that would require him to be bombastic or over-the-top (I’m looking at you, Sean Penn…), and this role suits him well.  Characters he portrays tend to be more reserved and rely more on emotion and body language to convey ideas, and his spin on Mark Watney is dead-on perfect for that philosophy. Watney is what we all hope we could be in such a situation, and his performance of the character is pitch-perfect.  He combats the despair of his situation not only with rational thinking, but also with wit and humor, both cleverly shown to us by means of the video logs he keeps.  Despite being more physically alone than any human being ever has, he never totally loses hope, although he does come close a time or two, as I’m sure we all would.

As I mentioned earlier, Sir Ridley has had some less-than-stellar work in theaters over the last ten years (although even those films tend to improve when he re-cuts them for home video, which could easily be the subject of another lengthy essay), but no matter what one’s opinion may be about the narrative quality of any of those movies, I defy anyone to say that his movies aren’t always beautiful to watch.  The Martian is no exception. Utilizing the region of Jordan where parts of Lawrence of Arabia were shot more than fifty years ago, along with some help from post-production color-correction, he has created an incredibly believable Mars.  His directing skills are firing on all cylinders here, and his visual choices tell us as much as the script’s words do.  Time after time, he is moving us from lush, panoramic shot of beautiful Martian landscape, to an object presenting a challenge, to a facial expression telling us all we need to know about that challenge.

You may think the plot sounds as though is not terribly different from Cast Away or Robinson Crusoe or Gravity, but the character of Mark Watney IS original.  It’s easy to say that this is a Marooned-in-Space movie, and in a way it is, but it is so much more than that.  It is a story of personality.  It is a story of perseverance.  It is a story of how calm, rational thinking can eventually overcome most any problem.  It is a story of how even those calm, rational thinkers still have emotion and must factor that into their decisions.

...and it’s Ridley Scott’s best movie in a decade, so it’s got that going for it, too.

"Fifty Shades of Grey" leaves me wondering where the other forty-nine are…

I don’t quite know where to begin with this one.  Movies that result from cultural-phenomenon books present a bit of a quandary for a reviewer.  One is expected to review a film as a solitary entity, standing alone and free of whatever faults the source material may have had.  On the other hand, it’s unreasonable to expect a writer to express an issue with a part of such a movie without knowing that some reader somewhere will be shouting at the review “yeah, but in the book, blah, blah, blah, so of course, you don’t get it!!!” There’s no denying some story has existed before, and there are times when it must be acknowledged.  So, let’s get started with some acknowledging...

I even wonder how much a synopsis of the film is necessary, as the book was such a cultural happening three years ago that any reader is most likely already familiar with at least the basic premise.  We all know of the titillating aspects of the story, and how it opening on Valentine’s Day weekend is something of a sick joke on Universal’s part (is THIS the kind of tale you equate with your affection for whomever you hold dearest…?).  Millions of women, and a few men, I suppose, have lost themselves in the modern fairy tale-type story of young college grad Anastasia Steele and her surprising and unexpected “romance” with the cold, intimidating, dominating billionaire Christian Grey.  I’m sure there are quite a few babies out there that were born exactly nine months after their mothers finished the juicier parts of the first book.  Given how I have no intention of reading it, or the other two, I’ll just take the incredible sales figures of the books as testament to the story’s quality.  The movie is what we’re talking about today. 

I hesitate to call Fifty Shades of Grey a flawed film, because I find it hard to point to any individual thing in the movie and think that fixing it would have resulted in a better product.  Dakota Johnson conveys the naiveté of Anastasia believably, and while Jamie Dornan as the movie’s titular Grey character comes off as a bit of a cold fish, one could argue that might have been appropriate for the character. The dreary, rainy Seattle and other Washington State settings (locations all duplicated in the Hollywood-North that Vancouver, British Columbia has become) fit into the “gray” tone of the film, as with two hundred days of rain per year, I imagine there’s not much else for people up there to do besides stay indoors and beat on one another with whips and chains.  I even found director Sam(antha) Taylor-Johnson’s choices of where to place the rare instance of brighter color pretty impressive, the occasional red or blue punctuating some particular emotion in a given scene.  Even the “money” shots of the bondage/domination practices that everyone came to see are done as tastefully as they possibly could be, avoiding the NC-17 rating that would result if such a story were told in any realistic fashion.

The point where Fifty Shades of Grey fails can be placed before production even started - the story itself is a load of crap.  Let’s face it - it’s an open secret that the source material for this tale began its life as Twilight fan-fiction, and even after being reworked by its author into an original work, it still appeals to the same crowd as drugstore romance novels once did.  As such, when turned into something visual, its inadequacies are laid out for all to see. The poor-innocent-girl-meets-maddeningly-handsome-rich-gentleman story is as old as time, and there isn’t much variation on the theme here, with the possible exception of the addition of a ball-gag and dog collar or two… or three.  Waking up in opulent hotel rooms, having drivers whisk you off in black limousines to meet Mr. Handsome, who will fly you away in his helicopter… all of the stereotypical Cinderella-story tropes are here, and all details period-appropriate for the early 21st Century in the Tech Capital of the Pacific Northwest. 

The movie follows these two primary characters along what is supposed to be an evolution for both of them, but they are both such cardboard-cutouts that I couldn’t invest myself in them emotionally.  I believe the word “telecommunications” was uttered once at the beginning of the film to explain how this young hipster has more money than Bill Gates at the ripened, experienced age of twenty-seven, but that’s as far as we go in learning about how this young pup has all this “success” before most men have made it out of their first cubicle.  We got a little more explanation about Anastasia’s roots than Christian’s, but what little we learned about him was of how he is now, not his past.  We did learn he was adopted, but not much else after that.  

This is the point where I begin to hear all the readers out there screaming “you learn all that from what they say in the second book!” Fine and dandy, but I’m talking about this movie, not some book I’ll never read, and this movie didn’t tell me enough to make me care about these people, and if this dialogue was brought over from those books, then it should’ve been dumped for more life-like speech.  Lines which may work on the printed page of best-selling novels are sometimes cringe-worthy when actually heard spoken aloud (as Harrison Ford claims he once said to George Lucas on the set of Return of the Jedi, “you can write this shit, George, but you sure can’t SAY it!)

Taylor-Johnson only has one previous feature film to her directorial credit, 2009’s Nowhere Boy, a speculative-type study of the early life of John Lennon.  I have not seen this film, but I see on IMdB that it received widely-varied reviews, further evidence for me that Fifty Shades’ failings may not all be her fault.  As I mentioned earlier, I thought she did as good a job as she possibly could have with what she was assigned to do, although I wonder if she had the filmmaking wisdom to realize this material needed lots of reworking before any frame should have been shot, or was she so grateful for the job that she didn’t want to rock the boat and suggest changes to something that was already so wildly successful in another medium.  Alas, I may never know.

There possibly could be a very interesting story about the emotional damage that would lead someone into such deviant sexual habits, and how those personality shortcomings could destroy any potential for a fulfilling, healthy relationship… Oh, wait, there has been - it was Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris.  THAT’S the movie this flick wishes it could be.