Quick Reaction: Wuthering Heights (1939)

1939 was a very strong year in film, so it’s ok if Wuthering Heights falls way behind The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and others in the history books. I certainly enjoyed catching up on all the Best Picture winners in the last couple years. I also like watching this also-ran films (i.e. Best Picture nominees). Wuthering Heights got a bunch of nominations but it really did disappear in a lot of ways. Having William Wyler as the director and Laurence Olivier as a star certainly helps people find this, but it’s not that memorable. I’m always thrown off when reviews at the time call a movie dull. I get why I may think it’s dull now. Older films work at a different pace that I’m not as accustomed to. But if contemporary audiences were like “Oh, another sleepy Bronte adaptation” that’s something. The movie is ok though. Performance and direction are good. Nothing about it really stands out. And, I can’t be the only one uncomfortable with how the poster borders on blackface for Olivier.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Stalker

Premise: Three men in a future dystopia travel to a room that gives a person their deepest desire.

 

The required lament I’m supposed to give after watching this is that they don’t make SciFi like this anymore. There are no effects and nothing to do with outer space. The movie is more of a philosophic meditation than anything else. It’s three guys in ruins and desolate fields talking about mind games for well over 2.5 hours. In one respect, I do agree with the required lament. It was nice to see such a simple SciFi movie. Despite it just being three guys talking cryptically, the movie chugs along at a good pace. I was often surprised at how much time had passed already. I enjoyed watching this more than I expected. I definitely want to check out more of Andrei Tarkovsky’s films now.

 

On the other hand, I’m not clamoring for a lot more movies like this. Any movie I watch has earned 90 minutes just for existing. I have patience for anything under 2 hours. Above that, I need to start seeing some justification. It doesn’t need to be a great justification. I’m fine if it’s just that there are a lot of action scenes and they need to justify a reason to string them together. It can be that there are so many good jokes that they don’t want to cut out. I’m even fine with a movie taking its time to build familiarity for a climax that can then hit harder. I just can’t deal with time wasting. Stalker just doesn’t have enough going on to justify why it was so long. Not all those conversations were vital. Many of those points could’ve been made simpler with just as much effectiveness. While I liked Stalker, I’m not rooting for anyone to imitate its formula. It’s hard to pull it off and Stalker only barely does.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Henry V

Premise: Another adaptation of Henry V.

 

I don’t need more Shakespeare in my life. Even if I agree with the idea that he’s the greatest author in history*, there’s simply no way that his level of greatness matches the amount that he is taught in schools. I’m just as tired of people bending over backwards to convince me of his relevancy or how his works are just as populist as anything today. To be clear, they were populist at the time, but populist is an evolving term. It’s so awkward the times I’ve seen Shakespeare plays how audiences try to will their way to surprised reactions. We know the stories. We know the jokes. We all know the language sounds unnatural to us now. Can we stop pretending?

 

*I’m not sure that I do, but let’s play along.

 

On the other hand, like how there are too many WWII stories out there, if Shakespeare is done well enough or with enough of an interesting take, I can still like it well enough. If nothing else, I’m fascinated by how Henry V is adapted in this movie. It starts as an actual production of the play in the Globe Theater in 1600, then morphs into a live-action account of the actual battle of Agincourt. It’s clever. The stage production part suggests an authentic reaction to the play. It’s easy for me to believe how a rowdy 17^th century audience would react to everything rather than a staid 20^th century audience. When it switches to the “real” part, there’s still a level of artificiality to it that reminds me it’s still just being a play.

 

I really don’t think Shakespeare can work on film without that level of artificiality. So many Shakespeare adaptations try to make it real. Shakespearean dialog isn’t meant to sound real though. They can shoot in an actual castle and spend a fortune on accurate costumes, but the characters are still taking in perfectly written verse. I wish more adaptations would do what Henry V does and own up to being a play right away.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: All the Old Knives

Premise: Two spies and former lovers meet to recount the events of an operation gone wrong from 8 years before.

 

Here’s the truth. I definitely went into this movie a few drinks in and realized too late that this wasn’t a good movie for that. You see, I was expecting more of an action spy thriller. You know, a medium budget, straightforward story, where all I really needed to do was marvel at how attractive Thandiwe Newton and Chris Pine were before maybe a twist or two at the end. Some of this was right, but I did not account for how quiet and talky the movie would be. In other words, I didn’t follow much of what was happening with the twists and betrayals. I was confused about the specifics for most of the movie while I could still appreciate the dynamic between Pine and Newton.

 

A quick look at some reviews though, and now I’m thinking it wasn’t just the alcohol. It seems that a lot of people found the espionage a little dull and stayed interested just because of Newton and Pine. So, I guess I do feel comfortable in my assessment. All the Old Knives is a function of good casting. Pine and Newton have great chemistry. I especially related to Pine, because I too would hold a candle for Thandiwe Newton for 8 years if she left me. It still makes no sense to me how good Pine looks with a beard. Star Trek-era you could not have convinced me that his peak handsomeness was anything but clean-shaven. It turns out he rocks a beard with some grey just as well. And Newton has looked photoshopped for a quarter-century and counting. They are the sexy center with serious stalwarts like Laurence Fishburne and Jonathan Pryce on the side.

 

It would’ve been nice if the screenplay could match what they brought. Part of the problem is that the movie has a Flight problem but it structures it like it doesn’t. Flight has that terrific plane crash sequence early on, and the rest of the movie struggles to match that urgency and tension. All the Old Knives tries to get around that with a flashback structure. The idea is that as the personal tension of the conversation in the present rises, the tension rises in tandem as what went wrong on the mission 8 years ago is revealed. The problem is, I know right away that it’s a tragedy involving hostages on a plane. I don’t need to know the specifics to know what happened. So, I’m not getting any tension from that part of the story. That creates an imbalanced film. Thank god that Newton and Pine nearly keep it all afloat.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Movie Reaction: Jurassic World: Dominion

Formula: Jurassic World – Jurassic Park

 

In preparation to writing this, I did something I rarely do. I went back and re-read my Reactions for the last two movies. I don’t know why I don’t normally do this. Probably laziness. I do also like to avoid writing something to underline my points about the last movie rather than coming up with something new to say about the current one. Besides, it’s fun going back afterwards and realizing I made the same pun each time independently. I needed it for Jurassic World: Dominion though, because there’s been too much noise about the franchise over the years.

 

Jurassic World hit theaters like a freight train Summer 2015, riding a wave of goodwill from a successful 3-D re-release of Jurassic Park to a record-breaking opening weekend at the box office. At the time, I enjoyed it with caveats. In the years since, the flaws of the movie have been the main things I’ve remembered and director Colin Trevorrow has become a critical punching bag [somewhat unfairly]. I needed the reminder that I kind of liked Jurassic World. I also needed the reminder of how strongly I disliked Fallen Kingdom. It feels like the public sentiment caught up to me on that one eventually and it’s coming across in the franchise-worst reviews of Dominion. This happens more than people like to admit. They often vent frustrations about the next movie because they hedged on the last one. That’s not some conspiracy either. I’ve done this a lot. I’ll see a movie that I thought was bad, but I’ll soften my Reaction thinking I must’ve missed something. By the time the sequel comes along, I’ll realize I didn’t miss something. I just didn’t like the movie. Then half of my Reaction for the sequel will be about how much I disliked the last movie.

 

This is all a roundabout way of saying that, while I didn’t love Jurassic World: Dominion, I thought it was completely OK: not deserving of its series low Metacritic and RottenTomatoes scores.

 

In my Fallen Kingdom Reaction, I talk about how it may be the park as much as the dinosaurs that make the Jurassic series work. That’s why putting most of Fallen Kingdom in the middle of a volcano or in an indoor compound sapped it of a lot of life. You really need a controlled environment that is no longer controlled. So, instead of a poorly run park, Dominion uses a poorly run wildlife sanctuary/corporate headquarters. It’s just really hard to mess up a T-Rex terrorizing people in a tropical forest surrounded by man-made structures intended to control it. Or, more simply put, a Jurassic movie is better when it is man encroaching on the dinosaur world than when it’s dinosaurs encroaching on the human world. Dominion has a lot of the former.

 

The story is still incredibly dumb and convoluted. Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) are still in hiding protecting the cloned Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon). They’ve been keeping her isolated while still going on adventures of their own. But, inevitably, the evil BioSyn Genetics company finds her and brings her to their remote headquarters which is also a dinosaur compound: basically a Jurassic Park but not open to the public. Owen and Claire of course follow her to HQ to rescue her. Meanwhile, Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) pulls in Alan Grant (Sam Neill) to investigate a herd of locusts infused with dino DNA that are wiping out the world grain supply. This also leads them to BioSyn HQ where Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) is working as the on-campus Ted Talker, and might also be a mole.

 

A surprising number of faces from the previous movies like Omar Sy and Justice Smith show up to let you know they aren’t dead, I guess. The big additions are DeWanda Wise as a pilot who gets Claire and Owen to the island and Campbell Scott as the latest CEO who thinks he can harness the power of dinosaurs for himself. The cast is too big for the movie to reasonably maintain, so no one gets much more sketching than they had from previous movies or than can be established from assigning a basic character type. For example, Pratt and Howard do not sell the parental affection for Sermon at all. I felt nothing when they get reunited. It’s still crazy to me that they use “wise-cracking Chris Pratt” so little in this series. It’s like other than Guardians, there’s a mandate that action movie starring Chris Pratt can’t be the incredibly funny Chris Pratt that made people want to turn him into an action movie star.

 

Jurassic World on a story level has a similar issue as another series inspired by a Michael Chricton book. The appeal of Westworld to me is the park or parks. It’s a cool, fake world. I love seeing how they imagine it would run from an operations perspective and what it looks like when it falls apart. That show really lost me when it became more about the robots existing in the real world and trying to take down an evil corporation and/or humanity in general. Jurassic World is the same. I like the dinosaurs. I don’t care as much about how dinosaurs can eventually coexist in the real world. I don’t need to see harmonious shots of dinos galloping with horses in a field. It’s insane to me that the major threat in a Jurassic World movie is killer locusts. And I really don’t need conspiracies surrounding human cloning. I know these are all natural developments that can happen in a world where we can recreate dinosaurs. They just haven’t come up with a better idea than “What if there was a park with dinosaurs?” so the series feels so tired 6 movies in.

 

Jurassic World: Dominion gets close enough to the premise that works for me to enjoy it. Getting back the core original cast to add to the JW cast is cheap but effective. Putting them back in a facility getting overrun by dinosaurs is a smart move. Backing away from amplified dinosaurs as superweapons is wise too. I see why this movie isn’t being received well. There’s a lot of stupid to it. This franchise relies far too much on no one knowing how to run a secure facility: secure from dinosaurs and secure from people trying to mess with it. I think Dominion remembers just enough about what has made this series popular to work. After JD Bayona’s over-directed mess in Fallen Kingdom, I was happy to have Colin Trevorrow back to be kind of invisible.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

 

(Note: Just because I found a movie somewhat watchable doesn’t mean I’ll recommend it)

Movie Reaction: Crimes of the Future

Formula: Brazil * eXistenZ

 

There are some directors that can make an audience nervous just by having a new film. Guys like Gaspar Noe and Lars von Trier can scare me away from a theater because I know if I’m not gelling with a movie they make, I’m in for an excruciating 2 hours. They are known for going to extremes and taking huge swings. David Cronenberg has this reputation as well, although it hasn’t been as deserved the last two decades. If I say Cronenberg, you think of body horror, Videodrome, The Fly, etc. He hasn’t really gone that direction since 1999’s eXistenZ though. 2000s releases like A History of Violence and A Dangerous Method aren’t exactly tame, but they aren’t as crazy as his earlier work. And I’d argue that his uses that metatextually in those films. They are tenser than they should be because, since it’s Cronenberg, they can flip on a dime at any moment. Crimes of the Future is Cronenberg returning to being Cronenberg.

 

I won’t waste your time anymore with anticipation. I hated this movie. And that’s OK. Had Cinemascore tracked this movie, it most certainly would be an F score. It’s that kind of movie. Most people will hate it. A few people will love it. As much as I enjoy being a contrarian, sometimes I’m with most people on something.

 

Crimes of the Future is set in a near future where humans have messed with themselves so much that they are fighting off mutations. Most people can no longer feel pain, for instance. There are some who start naturally growing new organs. These new organs can lead to them no longer being considered human but a different species entirely, so they remove them to stay legally human. Saul (Viggo Mortensen) and Caprice (Lea Seydoux) are performance artists who make shows out of him getting his new organs that she first tattooed removed from his body. It’s very sexual, because apparently surgery is the new sex. Without getting too deep into things, Saul and Caprice get mixed up with a group of people who do surgeries to themselves so they can digest plastic (“eat a modern diet” they say). The police are trying to stop these plastic eaters, and that’s the surface tension of the movie. There’s a lot more going on, like Kristen Stewart as a mousy-voiced employee of the department of organ registration. I don’t have the space to get into it all, but trust me that it’s a lot.

 

Technically speaking, I think the film is well made. Everyone gives specific and mannered performances. It’s the kind of thing where I assume everyone kind of hurt themselves just by talking in scenes. The production design is warped in a very Cronenberg way, mixing technology with organic substances. The whole world is cleverly thought out even though it never feels real. The film is an accomplishment that was rightly competing for the Palm d’Or at Cannes this year. But I didn’t like it.

 

The performances bothered me. I think the mannerisms drove the performances too much. It was a lot of Viggo Moretensen adjusting his hyoid bone and Kristen Stewart seeing how barely she could talk when delivering a line. I don’t fully follow the logic of the world, like why surgery is the new sex. The driving force of a lot of it struck me as “what would look gnarly?” In general, I’ve never responded well to films/shows where the point was to make me uncomfortable. It’s why The Office hasn’t aged as well for me and why I never really loved “The Dinner Party” episode. My physical reaction to it outweighs any mental engagement I get. That makes me a poor Cronenberg audience. And, I might as well end with my laziest criticism. It’s boring. I started to drift off midway through this which is something I rarely do. The pacing wasn’t aligned with me. It reminded me of in math class when the teacher would stop to explain the part I already understood then hop around at the part of the problem I was having trouble following. It was a tedious viewing experience.

 

I should’ve known this was a film better for me to watch at home. I need an escape hatch for a Cronenberg movie so I’m not trapped when I realize it’s not working for me 10 minutes in. I think there are valid reasons to like the movie too. Just please don’t come to me with “You just didn’t get it.” I get enough of that crap from the Lynch fans.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don’t Recommend

Movie Reaction: Watcher

Formula: It Follows – It + He

 

Stalker movies are hard. The first impulse with them is to mix them with gaslight movies. That’s a horrible combination most of the time. You see, I know it’s a stalker movie, which means one of two things: 1) There actually isn’t a stalker and the protagonist is insane. That’s a deflating twist ending that no one wants. 2) There is a stalker. Since we’re following the protagonist, we know there’s a stalker. Then it’s annoying to see everyone else bend over backwards to believe there isn’t a stalker.

 

The latter option is what Watcher opts for. Julia (Maika Monroe) moves to Bucharest with her husband because he got a promotion. She’s isolated all day in a country she doesn’t know where most people speak a language she doesn’t know. One day, she notices a man following her and watching her from his window across the street. This makes her uncomfortable and everyone from her husband to the police tell her she’s exaggerating. She’s not, and you can figure out where this goes.

 

Watcher has shockingly little tension. The stalker (Burn Gorman) is a bad stalker and Julia is a bad victim. He’s too obvious about the stalking to leave the audience in doubt but not bold enough to feel like an immediate threat. One version of this movie could be about all the hiding in plain sight the stalker is doing. Keep him anonymous for as long as possible. Keep Julia at ill ease all the time and make it the kind of thing where, once you know who the stalker is, you watch the movie again and see him in the background of a bunch of scenes. Or, go with an active predator movie. The stalker is so good at stalking that he doesn’t hide it. He always has an alibi in place or successfully makes Julia seem crazy. Instead, Gorman is pretty obvious in his stalking. The only reason he gets away with it so long is because Julia mishandles it so badly. I was hoping she’d be cleverer.

 

The movie gets certain bits of atmosphere right. It shows how unsettling Bucharest can be to someone who isn’t familiar with it. The age of Europe really helps with horror. Monroe holds the screen well and tries to make her character beats feel natural. The overall vibe of the movie works. I just wish the story beats met the level of the direction and performance.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

 

After the Credits

What is Gorman’s plan exactly? He’s been identified as who Julia thinks her stalker is. The police know about his connection to her. So, he’s going to kill her neighbor in his distinctive serial killer fashion then kill Julia and expect to get away with it? This movie implies that he is very good at what he does, but if these are his actions every time, I don’t understand how he wasn’t caught after the first murder.