Movie Review: Waves

Waves **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Trey Edward Shults.

Written by: Trey Edward Shults.

Starring: Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Tyler), Taylor Russell (Emily), Lucas Hedges (Luke), Sterling K. Brown (Ronald), Renée Elise Goldsberry (Catherine), Alexa Demie (Alexis), Clifton Collins Jr. (Bobby), Neal Huff (Bill).

 

Waves is a film about love and death and family. About guilt and redemption. It’s a film that isn’t afraid to go big – to be a giant, messy film that amps up the emotions, and the music, to 11 and just go for it. It’s a film that reminds me of some of John Cassavetes work – like say Love Streams – or Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia. It goes for that level of pain and heartbreak. It is a major step forward for writer/director Trey Edward Shults, whose two previous films Krisha and It Comes at Night, also focused on a family in intense times – but this one takes it to a completely different level.

 

The film is basically split into two parts. The first part focuses on Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr. – proving once again, after Luce, that he’s one of the best young actors in the world). Tyler is a star high school wrestler – the son of another wrestler, Ronald (Sterling K. Brown) – who has made a success of himself, and pushes his son to do the same. This comes out in destructive ways – like when his shoulder pain turns out not to be a minor issue, but something serious – requiring surgery, and probably means he will never wrestle again. Tyler, who is 18, hides this from his parents – and keeps wrestling – with bad results. Things get even worse when his girlfriend Alexis (Alexa Demie) tells him she’s pregnant – and after some back and forth, decides she wants to keep the baby. To say Tyler handles it poorly would be an understatement – as this half of the movie hurtles toward a tragic conclusion. The second half of the film focuses on Tyler’s younger sister, Emily (Taylor Russell) and how she navigates the aftermath of what happened in the first. Her family is falling apart, she is ostracized at school, etc. Then she meets Luke (Lucas Hedges) – and the pair fall in love, the kind of sweet teenage love with caught a glimpse of in the first half of the film between Tyler and Alexis, before it all falls apart. There is death and tragedy in the second part though – but a different kind, in a different register.

 

The film opens with a literally dizzying shot – shot from inside a car, the camera rotates around and around, watching Tyler and his friends as the cruise through the streets. You almost get the sense that something bad is going to happen – but it doesn’t here. Propelled by the music, it’s really a freeing moment in the film – showing these kids letting loose. A lot will happen in cars in the film – often set to music, which is the backbone of the film (not just the song choices, but the typically wonderful work by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross on the score) – but it won’t always be so freeing. It’s in a car, where things come to a head between Tyler and Alexi, it’s in a car where Tyler will go out of the house drunk, on the night he makes one horrible decision after another, it’s in a car where Emily and Luke will go on their sweet dates – and later on a road trip to see a figure from Luke’s past. The cars take them everywhere – good and bad.

 

The film is one with the emotions dialed way up – and the style matches that. The work by cinematographer Drew Daniels is magnificent – it glides through these people and their lives – the colors are deep and saturated. He plays with aspect ratio as well – the screen becomes narrower as Tyler’s world collapses around him. The colors change as well – there is a gentler, softer color in the second half of the film that befits the relationship we see at play there.

 

The film is about the mistakes we make – and the consequences of those mistakes. Some of the mistakes are obvious – like Tyler’s – and some are less so, like the ones his father makes. They all have an impact though – and those impacts reverberate among those closest to us. It is about learning to forgive – and having the ability to move on. This doesn’t undo those mistakes – you still have to pay for them, as Tyler will have to do, and how his father has to in a different way. But it’s up to us how we about doing that.

 

It’s also just an emotionally powerful – and emotionally exhausting film. All of Shults stylistic tricks work here – he isn’t doing them just to show off, but to deepen the emotions. And part of that is due to the performances – all of which hit the right notes. Harrison Jr. is a star – and Hollywood will surely realize that soon. Taylor Russell has a less showy role – it’s a quieter performance, as Emily as a quieter more internal character – but it’s just as good. We expect good work from the likes of Lucas Hedges, Sterling K. Brown and Renée Elise Goldsberry- and none of them disappoint.

 

Waves is an example of the type of film I love – the type in watch a promising filmmaker finally makes good on that promise. Both Krisha and It Comes at Night were very good films – but you see a great filmmaker in there, honing their craft. In Waves, it all comes crashing out of Shults – and results in one of the year’s best films.

Movie Review: The Report

The Report **** / *****

Directed by: Scott Z. Burns.

Written by: Scott Z. Burns.

Starring: Adam Driver (Daniel Jones), Annette Bening (Senator Dianne Feinstein), Jon Hamm (Denis McDonough), Linda Powell (Marcy Morris), Maura Tierney (Bernadette), Michael C. Hall (Thomas Eastman), Corey Stoll (Cyrus Clifford), John Rothman (Senator Sheldon Whitehouse), Guy Boyd (Senator Saxby Chambliss), Alexander Chaplin (Sean Murphy), Joanne Tucker (Gretchen), Dominic Fumusa (George Tenet), Sarah Goldberg (April), Fajer Al-Kaisi (Ali Soufan), Zuhdi Boueri (Abu Zubaydah), Douglas Hodge (James Mitchell), T. Ryder Smith (Bruce Jessen), Carlos Gómez (Jose Rodriguez), Tim Blake Nelson (Raymond Nathan), Ratnesh Dubey (Khaled Sheikh Muhammad), Ted Levine (John Brennan), Scott Shepherd (Senator Mark Udall), Daniel London (CIA Officer Fox), Jennifer Morrison (Caroline Krass), Matthew Rhys (New York Times Reporter), Kate Beahan (Candace Ames).

 

Scott Z. Burns The Report probably shouldn’t well as well as it does. Hell, it shouldn’t really work at all. This is a film after all about one man’s obsessive quest to get the bottom of what the CIA’s Enhanced Interrogation Techniques used in the wake of 9/11 actually meant, what they did and what they learned, if anything, as a result of these interrogations. But Daniel Jones (Adam Driver) isn’t a journalist – he works for the Senate Intelligence Committee, specifically for Senator Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening) – and we learn early on that the CIA will make no one available for interviews. Instead, Driver and his team – first with five other people, soon down to two – will essentially spend five years in a dank room in the CIA basement, going through document after document, and piecing together what exactly the CIA did, in their own words, and figuring out how different that is than what the CIA has said publicly. The Report really is a movie about data. How do you make data exciting?

 

Burns is able to do it in a few ways. For one, it helps to have an actor like Driver in the central performance here – an actor who make anything look interesting, and seemingly equally comfortable staring at a computer as when he has to deliver some long, data dump speeches in the film, that play like less inspirational Aaron Sorkin monologues. Like Jake Gyllenhaal in Zodiac, Driver is essentially playing a character whose entire life is contained in a room – in all the documents he spends years reading. He starts to look paler and paler as the movie goes on – even as his blood temperature rises.

 

For another, Burns is not above some more dramatic flashbacks. As Driver reads what was done, we do flash to the CIA black sites where the enhanced interrogation techniques were being used, under the eye of two psychologists who don’t know what they are doing – Mitchell and Jessen (Douglas Hodge and T. Ryder Smith), who relationship with each other would almost be comically inept, except it involved torturing people. There are other faces we start to recognize – like Maura Tierney as a CIA agent there, also overseeing the interrogations, who seems to realize before Mitchell and Jessen that their works isn’t getting them anywhere, but keeps right on going along with it anyway. The CIA is mad in the wake of 9/11 – mad that they didn’t stop it, and they want revenge. And with the Bush White House giving them cover – they find it.

 

Yet while The Report clearly has no lost for the Bush years, and takes shot at the fictional and not so fictional depictions of Enhanced Interrogation on display – Jones explicitly references 24 as something they have to work against, and sighs deeply when a commercial for Zero Dark Thirty comes on TV, what is more surprising perhaps is how critical the film is of the Obama Whitehouse. Most of the film takes places during the Obama years – either in the first term, or leading up to the second term – and Obama and company don’t seem too interested in getting this information out to the public either. Obama is trying to look post partisan (didn’t work) and doesn’t want to be seen as attacking Bush. Besides, this is over – it’s in the past, and no one wants to hear it. They got Bin Laden, why not turn the page and move on. Jones of course thinks differently – you cannot confront what was done until people know what it was, in all its details.

 

Really, The Report shouldn’t work. Yes, it has a lot of talented actors supporting Driver – Bening doesn’t really do a Feinstein impression, but she’s good just the same. As is Jon Hamm as an Obama aid, and Ted Levine as the head of the CIA, and various other character actors who show up in minor roles. But the film is basically one big data dump for two hours. We learn nothing about any of the people as people – beyond their job, and what they are doing to either help or hinder Jones. And yet the film is engrossing – even exciting – from beginning to end. I don’t know how many will watch The Report – audiences seemed not to care about these types of movies when Hollywood tried making them a decade ago. But they should watch The Report. In order to move forward, we have to know what happened in the past.

Movie Review: Doctor Sleep

Doctor Sleep *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Mike Flanagan.

Written by: Mike Flanagan based on the novel by Stephen King.

Starring: Ewan McGregor (Danny Torrance), Rebecca Ferguson (Rose the Hat), Kyliegh Curran (Abra Stone), Cliff Curtis (Billy Freeman), Zahn McClarnon (Crow Daddy), Emily Alyn Lind (Snakebite Andi), Selena Anduze (Apron Annie), Robert Longstreet (Barry the Chunk), Carel Struycken (Grampa Flick), Catherine Parker (Silent Sarey), James Flanagan (Diesel Doug), Met Clark (Short Eddie), Zackary Momoh (David Stone), Jocelin Donahue (Lucy Stone), Dakota Hickman (Young Abra), Carl Lumbly (Dick Hallorann), Thomas Downing (The Bartender), Bruce Greenwood (Dr. John), Alex Essoe (Wendy Torrance), Roger Dale Floyd (Young Danny), Jacob Tremblay (Bradley Trevor), Chelsea Talmadge (Deenie), Violet McGraw (Violet).

 

It couldn’t have been easy to write the screenplay for Doctor Sleep. Writer/director Mike Flanagan had to someone find a way to make a sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 masterpiece, The Shining, based on the Stephen King novel, but which Kubrick made a lot of changes to. But he also had to adapt the novel that Stephen King wrote as the sequel to his version of The Shining – which makes a point (too big of one really, it can be distracting while reading it) that King hates Kubrick’s version of events, and making it all but impossible for any adaptation of his book to also be a sequel to Kubrick’s film. And yet, with some bumps along the way, Flanagan mainly pulls it off – he even managed to do Kubrick one better in one (and only) area – he even got King himself to express how much he likes this film.

 

The adult Danny (Ewan McGregor) is still traumatized by the events of his childhood at the Overlook Hotel – and has pretty much been drinking to dull his memories of that time, and dull his own powers, ever since. Eventually, he hits rock bottom – jumps on a bus, and ends up in a small New Hampshire town, where he makes some new friends, and gets a job as a hospice orderly – where he can use his powers to help ease the transition into whatever is next for the residents there. He is still haunted by his past – literally in some cases – as he talks to his old friend Dick (Carl Lumbly, stepping in for Scatman Crothers), and has quite literally locked away the demons of the Overlook away in his mind.

 

The other major thrust of the story has to do with the group of people known as The True Knot, led by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson, oozing menace, charm, sexuality and danger in the films best performance). They track down kids who “shine” and breath in their steam. “Eat well, stay young, live long” is their basic motto – and they will do anything to do just that. The two stories are connected by young Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran), who has a powerful shine. She and Danny have never met in person – but have been communicating for years. When Abra finds herself on Rose the Hat’s radar – you know what’s it’s going to lead to a showdown – and you know where said showdown will take place.

 

It is in the final third of the book that Flanagan twists and goes directly into Kubrick territory. We had hints of this all along – not just with Dick, but the ghosts from the Overlook coming to Danny, and flashbacks to scenes with Alex Esscoe as Wendy, who we learn died years ago. King, of course, couldn’t go back to the Hotel himself in the book – because he blew it up in his first novel, but Kubrick didn’t, and it allows Flanagan the same type of fun Spielberg had in Ready Player One last year, playing with all the things Kubrick created in that film. If you’re one of those people who scream about movies raping your childhood, and you love The Shining, then maybe stay away. For me, who considers The Shining to be Kubrick’s best film, and one of the very best films ever made, I was amused by Flanagan’s homages and references. Perhaps he goes a little too far with them – returns to the well a little too often, and stretches out one scene in particular a little too long – but I think he did it with the best of intentions.

 

It’s odd that King seemingly likes this version of Doctor Sleep – which cuts out so much of his original novel, in particular much of the stuff that read like a giant middle finger to Kubrick, and replaces it with a loving homage to Kubrick instead. But for the most part, the changes here work. Flanagan doesn’t quite fix all the problems with King’s novel – in particular, Danny still isn’t much of a lead character, and unlike what Ferguson does with the villain, McGregor can’t make him more interesting. And you almost feel like Flanagan, who is a talented filmmaker in his own right, gets kind of lost here – trying to please both King and Kubrick, you cannot help but wonder where his own vision is. But he’s crafted a fine movie – it’s too long to be sure – but it’s spooky and creepy, sometimes downright scary, and really does bridge the gap between Kubrick and King, something I would have thought impossible.

Movie Review: The Irishman

The Irishman ***** / *****

Directed by: Martin Scorsese.

Written by: Steven Zaillian based on the book by Charles Brandt.

Starring: Robert De Niro (Frank Sheeran), Al Pacino (Jimmy Hoffa), Joe Pesci (Russell Bufalino), Jesse Plemons (Chuckie O'Brien), Anna Paquin (Peggy Sheeran), Harvey Keitel (Angelo Bruno), Bobby Cannavale (Felix 'Skinny Razor' DiTullio), Stephen Graham (Anthony Provenzano), Jack Huston (Robert F. Kennedy), Domenick Lombardozzi (Anthony Salerno), Aleksa Palladino (Mary Sheeran), Kathrine Narducci (Carrie Bufalino), Ray Romano (Bill Bufalino), Sebastian Maniscalco (Joseph 'Crazy Joe' Gallo), Jake Hoffman (Allen Dorfman), Stephanie Kurtzuba (Irene Sheeran), Louis Cancelmi (Sally Bugs), Kate Arrington (Connie Sheeran), Jim Norton (Don Rickles), India Ennenga (Dolores Sheeran), Gary Basaraba (Frank 'Fitz' Fitzsimmons), Paul Herman (Whispers), Jordyn DiNatale (Connie Sheeran - 14-16), Welker White (Josephine Hoffa), Jennifer Mudge (Maryanne Sheeran), Lucy Gallina (Peggy Sheeran - 7-11), Dascha Polanco (Nurse).

 

Martin Scorsese is 77 years old (and is mostly right about Marvel movies), and while he shows no real signs in slowing down (in the decade just closing, he directed 5 features, 5 documentaries, 2 television pilot and a short – and he has four films listed as “upcoming” on IMDB) and it feels like The Irishman is a film that Scorsese just had to make before the end of his career, and his life. It is his return to, and burial of, the gangster genre – where he brings back many of the familiar faces from the famous films of his past, one major face that somehow he never worked with before and has made an epic, three-and-a-half-hour farewell to the gangster genre, which is really a slow moving examination of aging and death. This isn’t the film of a younger man – the Scorsese who made GoodFellas 29 years ago or Casino 24 years ago – could not have made this film. It is very much a film about what happens after those films are over – when you are eventually left alone in a room, everyone you’ve ever known is dead, and you’re left with nothing but memories and regret. It is an epic masterpiece – and the film Scorsese had to make before he stopped.

 

In the film, Robert DeNiro plays Frank Sheeran – an Irish-American truck driver from Philly, who served in WWII, who will eventually fall in with the wrong guys, and then just kind of keep falling – making one compromise after another, until there’s nothing left. The film takes place over decades – Scorsese utilizing CGI de-aging technology so that the major characters can be played by the same actor at every point in his life (about the de-aging, I will say it was distracting for a scene or two, and then I mainly got used to it, and didn’t notice). First, he meets mob boss Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) and starts doing some work for him, gradually more and more violent work. And then, he’ll be loaned out to work for Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) – Frank being a union man himself, and one willing to do whatever it takes to win.

 

The Irishman is probably most similar to GoodFellas or Casino in Scorsese’s filmography – with one massive difference – this time, the film is more leisurely paced. Those two films felt as if Scorsese wanted to move at breakneck speed from beginning to end – always hanging on that razor edge of violence, or as if we were the coked up Henry Hill ourselves. The framing device for much of The Irishman is a long car ride that Frank and Russell take together with their wives – from Philly to Detroit – which takes an even longer time because Russell won’t allow anyone to smoke in his car, and the wives smoke constantly. This is Scorsese letting you know early to buckle in – this is going to be a very long ride.

 

Yet, Scorsese earn the epic length of The Irishman – it needs to be this long in a way because of how much more the film is about, other than a gangster movie. If the movie was really about what really happened to Jimmy Hoffa, then the film wouldn’t have waited 45 minutes to introduce Hoffa, and wouldn’t go on for at least 30 minutes after we get that answer (it isn’t by the way – the film is based on a book based on what Frank told a writer – much of it probably untrue. Scorsese and company basically treat it as historical fiction – or perhaps a tall tale your aging grandfather would tell you to keep you from leaving). This is a film with the weight of history hanging over it – and the weight of death. Scorsese often pauses the movie for a second when he introduces a new character – to tell us what sort of violent end that person will eventually meet – the effect is at once comic, and tragic – exactly the right tone.

 

Frank is at the center of nearly every scene in the film – and it really his story, how he makes one compromise after another, and how slowly the guise of being a good guy slips away from him, without him quite noticing until it is too late. The film has the trademark sudden flashes of violence of Scorsese’s other pictures – they are shocking and bloody, and over in the blink of an eye. They somehow feel more tragic than ever before as well – less exhilarant, more melancholy though. Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker do a masterpiece of slowing the whole thing down, forcing you to look a little deeper. He also mostly abandons his rock soundtrack treatment that he has used since Mean Streets (1973), for a sadder, slower soundtrack – including a score by Robbie Robertson.

 

The performances in the film are great. DeNiro is wonderful here – and if it’s a little distracting that DeNiro in this film isn’t the same DeNiro at 45 we saw in previous Scorsese films, not quite as quick to anger or violence, that’s also by design. DeNiro, who has basically mostly been sleepwalking through movies for the better part of two decades now, seems to know he cannot do that this time. While there is some reliance on old tricks – it’s not that much either. And there is a scene, with him on the phone to Hoffa’s wife, that is really one of the absolute best moments of DeNiro’s entire career. Pacino is perfect casting as Jimmy Hoffa as well – and it was smart on Scorsese to call on perhaps the actor best known for gangster movies who has never been in a Scorsese one before for this role. Hoffa is an outsider here – someone welcomed in, but kept at a distance. Pacino, who has the tendency to go big in his films more often than not these days goes really BIG with Hoffa – but it’s appropriate. Hoffa was a larger than life character, and Pacino’s demeanor here is perfect. The MVP of the movie though is Pesci – making just the third movie of his career in the last 20 years, his Russell Bufalino is every bit as cold and psychopathic as his characters in GoodFellas or Casino – but instead of going full psycho, he plays it calm, exuding authority. He doesn’t have to be like those characters, because Russell knows that people will do what they’re told, if they’re told by him to do it. His ultimate end here – like everyone’s – is tragic and sad. You spend so much time with these characters, that even though you know just how awful they are, you still feel empathy for them just the same.

 

I don’t know that anyone has ever taken a gangster film as far as Scorsese does in The Irishman – or that anyone ever thought to do so. The film opens and closes with tracking shots in a nursing home that Frank is leaving out his days – alone. His friends are dead, his family (represented by Anna Paquin, who is exquisite in her few scenes – but like all the women in the film, are basically silent – which you can view as a problem, but I think it part of the point of the film) knows who he is, and doesn’t much care what happens next. This is what happens if you live longer enough. And it comes at the end of another Scorsese masterpiece – a film that definitely ends one chapter in Scorsese’s career. If he continues to make movies – and I hope he does for years – I even wonder if he’ll ever make as definitive a closing statement as The Irishman.

Movie Review: David Crosby: Remember My Name

David Crosby: Remember My Name **** / *****

Directed by: A.J. Eaton.

 

Over the years, we’ve seen many documentaries about aging rock stars in their later years – decades after the height of their success and fame. For the most part, these docs are structured as inspiration – showing you the career that you know (or don’t, depending on how young you are) – while following the aging star as they embark on a new album, a new tour, etc. – in a defiant display of the star basically declaring “I’m not dead yet”. Usually, there are glowing talking head interviews with others – bandmates, friends, contemporaries, etc. who sing the praises of the subject – and if there was bad blood somewhere along the way, it’s been buried and forgotten. Many people, it seems, calm down with age – and let hurts and resentments go.

 

None of that describes A.J. Eaton’s David Crosby: Remember My Name, his doc about the 77-year old musician, famous for his time with The Byrds and Crosby, Stills and Nash (and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young). Well, that’s not entirely true – the structure is basically the same – it is a look back and Crosby’s career, and it does document a new tour and album. But Crosby is not the kind hearted elder statesman at the film’s core you expect – he’s as crotchety and stubborn as ever – revealing that it’s basically his fault that both versions of his most famous band, both with and without Young, blew up because of him – and just in the last few years. There aren’t any other talking heads saying nice things about Crosby, perhaps because Eaton couldn’t find any – certainly as Crosby admits everyone he made music with hates him, and his track record with women isn’t much better. He doesn’t hesitate to tell a story of how when he was dating Joni Mitchell, she came into the room with him and many of their friends, announced she had a new song to sing – and then sang it – and it basically amounted to a giant fuck you to Crosby himself. When she finished, she starred at him with hard for a few seconds – and then sang it again.

 

So it’s pretty clear that no matter what you can say about David Crosby – and that’s a lot – he knows he’s an asshole, and while he doesn’t like that about himself, he also knows it’s not about to change now. The film documents the way that Crosby hasn’t changed over the years – he’s always been this way, and he has burned many bridges with his behavior – pushing boundaries with his political opinions, or just being an asshole. Then the drug addiction, which he spiraled into, and ended up in jail for. And yet, through that all, the one thing that hasn’t left him is his voice. It’s still there, and he still sounds great. And, working solo again, he has found an artistic rebirth of sorts.

 

As a director, A.J. Eaton does a good job of editing this thing together from the old footage, to present day Crosby – and some interviews from other sources about Crosby, since they aren’t in the film in other ways. The interviews with Crosby himself as done by producer Cameron Crowe, who has been interviewing Crosby since the 1970s, when he was a reporter for Rolling Stone. Perhaps it is that level of familiarity that allows Crosby to open up so much – then again, opening up is what Crosby seems to be best at. It’s shutting up he cannot do.

 

The result is one of the best docs of its kind in recent memory – because it isn’t really a celebration of David Crosby – or at least not just a celebration of David Crosby – but something far thornier than that. Few musicians would open themselves up like that – but Crosby did.

Movie Review: Tell Me Who I Am

Tell Me Who I Am *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Ed Perkins.

 

Tell Me Who I Am has the kind of hook that if it was a plot of Law & Order SVU, you would call too far-fetched (and that show jumped the shark at least a decade ago). Marcus and Alex are identical twins, who grew up in the privileged class of England, the sons of wealthy parents. When Alex was 18, he was involved in a motorcycle accident, and although he survived, all his memories of his childhood were gone. The only person he remembered was Marcus, because, well, they are identical twins. Alex relied on Marcus to fill in the gaps of their childhood, and Marcus does so. But not everything makes sense. Why do the two of them live out in the garage of the huge house – and aren’t even allowed a key to the front door of the house? Why do their parents seem like they are hoarders? Why is there dad angry all the time – prone of fits of rage? Why, when their father is dying, and asks his sons for their forgiveness, does Marcus refuse to grant it? Why is Marcus not all that close with their mother? Why do all the strict rules of the house not relax once the father is dead? Alex has been given a clear picture of their childhood by Marcus – but not a complete picture? What is he hiding?

 

You can probably guess some of what those blanks are, and you would largely be on the right track. Over the course of Tell Me Who I Am, the walls start to come down more between the brothers than they ever had before. They both explain their positions on the subject – Marcus wonders why he should want to give Alex those memories, those things that have haunted him for his entire life if Alex doesn’t have them already. And if he tells Alex, he’ll have to relive them himself – and he has never told anyone. For Alex though, it feels like a whole piece of himself is missing – and he doesn’t know what. Eventually, he knows the barest of descriptions, but what actually happened is not something Marcus wants to go into. The twins have remained remarkably close their entire lives – they run their companies together, they are close in every respect. But this is something that Marcus just cannot bring himself to “give” Alex.

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Eventually, of course, the movie will give us those details. As directed by Ed Perkins, in a perhaps too stylish fashion, the film is broken down into three acts – the first about Alex piecing his life back together after his accident with Marcus’ help, the second about Marcus’ feelings as to why he cannot go to the places Alex wants him to, the guilt he feels about it, and the frustration Alex feels about not knowing. And then, in the final act, a kind of shared therapy session, when the two of them finally sit down face to face, and hash it out. By then, it is a remarkably cathartic moment – and as unlikely as it seems, even somewhat uplifting. These brothers, now in their 50s, still having some new ground to cover – some new discoveries to make. And once again, they’ll get through it together.

Movie Review: Terminator: Dark Fate

Terminator: Dark Fate ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Tim Miller.

Written by: David S. Goyer & Justin Rhodes and Billy Ray and James Cameron & Charles H. Eglee & Josh Friedman based on characters created by James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd.

Starring: Linda Hamilton (Sarah Connor), Arnold Schwarzenegger (T-800/Carl), Mackenzie Davis (Grace), Natalia Reyes (Dani Ramos), Gabriel Luna (Gabriel/REV-9), Diego Boneta (Diego Ramos), Tom Hopper (Hadrell), Steven Cree (Rigby), Stephanie Gil (Young Grace), Edward Furlong (John Connor),

 

I don’t like to tell filmmakers what they should do – not that they’d listen anyway -because I want great filmmakers to make whatever movies they want to make. When it comes to James Cameron however, I have to say that I’m more than a little sad that one of the best directors of large scale Hollywood blockbusters has basically decided not to make much anymore. He’s only directed one film since his Oscar winning Titanic (1997) – and although we keep hearing about new Avatar films, who knows when they will come out. Cameron is, I know, a divisive figure – but he really does do these types of massive blockbusters better than almost anyone – in particular when he doesn’t write them. But there has not been a film in his career since The Terminator (1984) that isn’t great, or doesn’t at least have major technological advances (perhaps both). I would love to see him direct more – and show others how it is done.

 

I thought about all of this while watching Terminator: Dark Fate – which apparently is Cameron’s return to the franchise he started, in part because there was little else to think about in the movie. Is it an improvement over the last two installments in the franchise – 2009’s Terminator: Salvation and 2015’s Terminator: Genisys? Yes, but that’s not much of an accomplishment now is it. But the film isn’t even half as good as 2003’s unjustly maligned Terminator: Rise of the Machine – let alone the first two films in the series, legitimate masterworks both. Yes, it’s nice to see Linda Hamilton back in the role that she made her own – and realizing perhaps that she is the real anchor of those first two films, not Arnold – but it’s disappointing how little they give Hamilton to do. They would have been better to follow the lead of Halloween (2018) – which made the film all about Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie, and the PTSD she has lived with for 40 years. There are nods to that in Terminator: Dark Fate – but it gets quickly shunted aside. This is a film that seemingly wanted to take the lead of Terminator 2 – and essentially be a chase sequence stretched to feature length – but forgot to make us care about anything in the film for that to work.

 

In this new film, we once again get two people from the future war sent back to protect a woman that will be vital to the revolution in the future. That woman is Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes) – a Mexican woman, working in a car plant. Her protector is Grace (Mackenzie Davis) – who is human, but a human that has been “upgraded” into a hybrid of person and machine. The Terminator sent back is a REV-9 – who takes the name Gabriel (Gabriel Luna) most of the time, and is basically an even badder ass, more unstoppable version of Robert Patrick’s T-1000. And Arnold is back again as well – having succeeded in his mission, he has “retired” and has been living as drape installer named Carl for decades – raising a family (not his own). But he has a debt to pay, so he’ll pay. And Sarah Connor (Hamilton) shows up as well – wanted to protect Dani, the new her.

 

The film is essentially one big chase sequence, with stops along the way for the heroes to try and fight off the REV-9, which they don’t think they can kill, but they just try and get through (why doesn’t either side ever send more than one back? The bad guys send five REV-9’s back, the movie’s over in 10 minutes). Perhaps in Cameron’s hands, the film would work. He’s clearly a director who knows how to do action sequences better than anyone, and suspect they he wouldn’t have done with Tim Miller does here – which is to speed everything up to make it seem more exciting, when really, it’s just a distraction more than anything. I won’t even mention the fact that while Cameron can clearly lay it on too thick in terms of sentimentality at times – he would have made you care about Sarah Connor, Dani, Grace, and yes, even Carl. Here, you don’t care about any of them.

 

It’s sad to see the Terminator franchise go out like this. Those first two films are legitimately great, and yes, I’ll say it again, I quite like Rise of the Machines – an unapologetically bleak blockbuster if ever there was one. But it’s clear now that the people in charge don’t understand what made the films work – or perhaps they don’t care, and are just trying to make money. But audiences are staying away now – which is sad. The Terminator films should be the type of blockbusters we need – not generic, by the number superhero films, but films with a real point-of-view, and something to say. But they haven’t been that in a long time now. Hopefully, they’ll just let the franchise die now.