Netflix Prestige Presentations: A Review of News of the World

 directed by Paul Greengrass

written by Paul Greengrass, Luke Davies

Today's review is of the kind of movie I used to thoroughly enjoy in theaters, back when that was still a thing. Directed by famed Bourne-franchise helmer Paul Greengrass and starring acting legend Tom Hanks, News of the World is a timely, taut, and surprisingly sweet if slightly predictable story about the ties that bind us all.

The year is 1870, just five years after the conclusion of the American Civil War, and Hanks plays Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a former Captain in the Confederate Army whose current livelihood is wandering from town to town, readings newspapers to the townsfolk for a small fee, a sort of precursor to today's news anchorman.  In his travels, he comes across the body of a murdered black soldier killed in a hate crime, and hiding nearby, his very much-alive young charge, a young girl (Helena Zengel) whose papers identify her as a German immigrant Johanna Leonberger but who apparently speaks only the native American language Kiowa. After asking around, Kidd learns that she was taken from a Kiowa family that the U.S. army had killed, who in turn had killed her family of German settlers and taken her, leaving the poor girl twice orphaned. Kidd decides to take her to the only family she has left, who live a good distance away from where he found her. As a result the two of them take a long perilous trip that sees them running into child traffickers, a small town autocrat and some very nasty weather and through it all, Kidd comes to ask himself what he really values in this world. 

For someone who established his career making gritty, contemporary action thrillers like the Jason Bourne movies or even his first collaboration with Hanks, 2013's Captain Phillips, Greengrass really seems at home with this more contemplative, less frenetic form of storytelling, which is equal parts action and drama.  

I gotta say: I really enjoyed this one. It's completely different from the kind of film I'm used to seeing from Greengrass, but it was a compelling watch nonetheless. Hanks is in his usual top form, but the real revelation here is Helena Zengel as the sometimes feral, always compelling Johanna, who has taken on the name Cicada and spends most of the film speaking in Kiowa a language the actress had to phonetically learn.  

It's a simple story and one, like I said, that tends to be a little predictable at times, but the way Greengrass and his actors bring it to life is what makes it a special viewing experience. I could tell this was a film meant to be seen on the big screen. 

Oddly enough, the film has something in common with another well-known Tom Hanks film, the animated Christmas-themed film The Polar Express, in which a character played by Hanks transports a child from one place to another over the course of the film and encounters one peril after another. The similarities end there, of course, but it was amusing to think of the comparison.

This one's worth a watch, for sure. 

9/10

My Netflix Ramblings, Part IV: A Review of Space Sweepers

 directed by Jo Sung Hee

written by Yoon Seung-Min, Yoo-Kang Seo-Ae and Jo Sung Hee

Next up for a review is Netflix's recent Korean made, sci-fi action pic Space Sweepers, starring Song Joong-Ki, Kim Tae Ri, Jin Seon-Kyu, Yoo Hae-Jin, Park Ye-Rin and British actor Richard Armitage as the bad guy. 

Set in the year 2092, the film, as the title suggests, is about a group of space scavengers who earn a living by salvaging, with their space dredger the Victory, the detritus of various space activities of the human race, like junked satellites, spaceships and other space flotsam.  Earth has become virtually uninhabitable, so a monolithic corporation, UTS, has established an oribiting space city for the affluent, with the rest of humanity compelled to live in squalor and pollution. To find humanity a new home, the CEO of UTS, the mysterious James Sullivan (Armitage), has ambitions of colonizing Mars.  None of this really matters to the cew of the Victory, namely Tae Ho (Song), Captain Jang (Kim), Tiger Park (Jin) and their robotic crewmate Bub (voiced by Yoo), who merely want to earn a living. That changes, though, when in one of their jobs, the crew come upon a most unexpected salvage: a little girl named Dororthy (Park Ye-Rin) who may hold either the key to humanity's salvation, or its destruction.  This causes a lot of interested parties, including the shadowy Black Fox, and UTS, to come down on the four salvagers like a ton of bricks.

Considering that this movie was produced for the equivalent of about $20 million USD, it has astonishing production value. The CGI is easily on par with that of some Hollywood productions that can cost anywhere from three to four times what this film did, and it's really impressive that they used that technology to create a world that looked truly lived-in and grungy, like the truly memorable space adventures like the first Star Wars film or Guardians of the Galaxy.  The lead actors were all quite likable, and even in their constant bickering had good onscreen chemistry, so it was a lot of fun to watch them go at it back and forth. Finally, the action was, for the most part, very well-staged, and seemed to take its cues from some of the more memorable space movies of the last few decades.

Therein, unfortunately, lies one of the film's problems: it's notably derivative. It borrows from a whole slew of films and even TV shows ranging from Star Wars to Neil Blomkamp's Elysium and even Netflix's own sci-fi series Altered Carbon.  In the climactic battle, I swear I could hear Brian Tyler's briefly used Marvel Fanfare playing in the music score.  I know a lot of movies borrow heavily from their predecessors in the genre (The Matrix, anyone?) and in some instances it's done in loving homage, but I have to say that here they borrowed a tad too liberally at times. 

While it's a problem I acknowledge, though, it didn't really affect my enjoyment of the film.

What DID affect my viewing experience, though, was quite a bit of illogical, hackneyed writing in the third act, a poorly-written villain in Armitage's James Sullivan and, apart from Armitage, some of the worst acting I've seen from the film's non-Korean cast, which is so bad it doesn't even approximate cable TV movie quality. Seriously, not even Cable TV quality.

Still, for all its flaws, I got through 2/3 of the movie just enjoying myself, which was more than enough to sustain me for when the third act silliness started kicking in.  It's a noticeably flawed movie, but still a better use of your time than sulking at home during quarantine.  

7/10

Netflix Ramblings Part III: A Review of (and Rant About) "White Tiger"

 written and directed by Ramin Bahrani

from the novel by Arvind Adiga

After plowing through a series of pretty but ultimately empty movies on Netflix, I finally found something a bit more substantial albeit problematic to watch and review.  

White Tiger, a drama adapted from the novel of the same name by Arvind Adiga is the story of Balram played by Adarsh Gourav, a young man who hails from what appears to be on of the very poorest parts of India who makes it his mission in life to climb out of poverty by any means necessary.  Over the course of the film, Balram's journey out of poverty involves lying, cheating, stealing, and eventually (spoiler alert) murder.

The film offers commentary not only on extreme poverty in India and the lengths to which people will go to extricate themselves from it, but also on just how deeply entrenched corruption is, especially among the privileged ruling class, and how it can consume just about everyone. 

It strikes me that this movie strives to be for India what 2019's Parasite was for South Korea, and employs a vaguely similar narrative. Bong Joon Ho's award-winning film centered around a family of con artists who charmed and finagled their way into employment by a wealthy family, while in this film, Balram puffs up his resume to get a job as a driver for a rich warlord (Mahesh Manjrekar), and eventually ends up driving for his son Ashok (Rajkummar Rao) and his wife Pinky (Priyanka Chopra), who come to be the embodiment of how privelege, and in particular wealth, are a virtual guarantee of freedom from accountability.

As ambitious as this film's goal is, though, its execution feels heavy-handed and clumsy. It employs a stylized narrative, using a clunky exposition device that borders on breaching the fourth wall, a narrative that feels inherently humorous, and has, in the lead role, an actor whose appearance suggests a comedian, but the whole thing plays out like a straight drama.

I'm under no delusion that this film is aimed at entertaining; it is clearly about provoking the audience, but it is clear that the filmmakers try to sway the viewer's sentiments towards Balram and his quest to climb out of poverty, esepcially when beset by his corrupt oppressors.  Whatever pretensions the filmmakers might have to the contrary, they clearly try to get us to root for Balram.

And this is where the movie fails spectacularly, especially in relation to "Parasite."  

Gourav's Balram is the spiritiual cousin of the family of con-artists in "Parasite" who not only lie about their resumes but also get the existing staff fired, as Balram does with his fellow family driver who, he learns, is a closeted Muslim working for a Hindu who hates Muslims.  Like the family in "Parasite" Balram is scheming, corrupt and willing to screw anyone over to get what he wants. 

"Parasite" however, used a deft blend of humor, dialogue and the interplay between characters to great effect to get viewers to look past the inherently disturbing aspect of what the family in the film was doing. In contrast Bahrani has Balram talking to the screen for most of the film's running time when he's not interacting with his boss or having throwaway conversations with other drivers. Basically we know what's in his head because he's telling us what's in his head, and at times like this is feels as if Balram is appealing to the viewer to sympathize with his plight. 

When the already dark film takes its final, truly sinister turn, the oddly abrupt conclusion feels largely unearned. Gourav, to be fair, turns in as sympathetic a performance as one could possibly manage with the script he's given, and with a better script might have sold me better on the film's real twist at the very, very end.  

"Parasite" this is not.  

6/10

Netflix Ramblings Part II: A Review of Outside the Wire

 directed by Mikael Hafstrom

written by Rob Yescome and Rowan Athale

This is now my fourth review of a Netflix film, and my sixth overall, and as with all of the movies I’ve reviewed so far, I clicked this one with a fair bit of optimism.

This time I’m reviewing the sci-fi action film Outside the Wire, produced by and starring Anthony Mackie, better known to filmgoers as the superhero Falcon from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  The film also features relative newcomer Damson Idris as its co-lead. 

 

It takes place in the near future, in which a fictional civil war has erupted in Ukraine, with the U.S. forces trying desperately to keep the country, which is being fought over by local freedom fighters and Russian-backed terrorists headed by Viktor Koval (Pilou Asbaek), from tearing itself apart.  Apart from their boots on the grounds, the Americans also deploy robotic soldiers called “Gumps” and air support in the form of drones.

 

The film begins during a skirmish involving the Americans and Koval’s forces, in which drone pilot Harp (Idris) makes a judgment call to take out a truck which he believes contains a missile launcher that could wipe out the entire squad of soldiers on the ground.  Two soldiers die as a result, and Harp’s wings are clipped. As punishment, he is then sent to Camp Nathaniel, the American base in Ukraine where he is put under the command of the mysterious, tough-as-nails Captain Leo (Anthony Mackie), who brings him along on a mysterious mission which turns out to be even more dangerous than Harp could ever possibly have imagined.  Again, Harp finds himself torn between obeying orders and facing down a threat that could destroy the world as he knows it.

I'll give Netflix this much: this movie has really solid production value; unlike the cable TV movies of old that sported bargain-basement special effects, this movie has some rock solid visuals, from the computer-generated imagery to the lived-in set design. In particular I was a big, big fan of the robotic "Gumps" which looked truly fearsome in combat, especially their Russian counterparts. The action choreography is nothing to sneeze at, either; from the gun battles to the bone-crunching fist fights, this is on par with the sort of action one would see in a Jason Bourne movie.  

Also, I've always found Anthony Mackie likable in everything I've seen him in, including  Netflix's own series Altered Carbon, so this was definitely a draw for me. I've liked Anthony Mackie as an actor since I "discovered" him in the little-seen 2006 movie about underground basketball called Crossover.  

Unfortunately, with a script that alternates between muddled and predictable, and a uneven performance from Damson Idris, the film's good points go pretty much to waste.  The dynamic between Harp and Leo is never particularly clear; and swings in a heartbeat from Harp being scared of him to constantly questioning him. Had it been done judiciously, even the film's predictable "twist" could have come off well, but failure to develop it means the twist comes off flat in the end.

Even with topnotch production value, this film ultimately plays out like many of the dystopian future schlockfests with which I used to pass the time on cable TV or while riding "fast craft" boats from one of our beautiful Philippine islands to another.  It's a shame that even with it's pretty suit, it's still just another B-movie.

 

6/10 

Netflix Ramblings Part I: Midnight Sky

directed by George Clooney 

written by Mark L. Smith

This marks my third review of a Netflix film on this channel and my fifth overall.  Back in the pre-COVID-19 days, back when I could still go to a nearby mall and enjoy movies the way they were meant to be enjoyed, i.e. on the big screen, I used to read articles describing Netflix and other streaming services as the future of cinema and laugh. Now, after having lived with the reality of a global pandemic and its crippling even on theatrical movie viewing, I inevitably find myself wondering if these pundits weren’t right all along.

 

So the movie I’m reviewing now is a sci-fi drama set during the apocalypse titled Midnight Sky, directed by and starring George Clooney.

 

In the year 2049, humankind has found that one of Jupiter’s moons, K-23, can actually sustain human life. The team of astronauts who made this momentous discovery, led by Sully (Felicity Jones) and Ade (David Oyelowo) are on their way back to Earth aboard the spaceship Aether to tell everyone the good news, unaware of the fact that the Earth has been rendered unlivable by a cataclysmic event that has apparently irradiated the entire planet.  As humanity frantically evacuates research facilities across the world in the vain hope of finding somewhere safe, Dr. August Lofthouse (Clooney), a world weary, terminally-ill scientist is left behind to contemplate his fate.  He soon realizes, however, that the team of astronauts headed back to Earth in the Aether is the only hope for the survival of the human race and that they must not, under any circumstances return to Earth. Lofthouse finds himself in a race against time to find a satellite array that reach the team in space so that he can tell them to turn away from the uninhabitable wasteland that the Earth has become and return to humanity’s new home.  Accompanying him on his perilous mission is a mysterious little girl named Iris (Caoilinn Springall) who was apparently left during the evacuation.

 

I’m generally a fan of apocalypse movies, so I clicked on this movie with some optimism.

 

I was therefore a little surprised and a little disappointed when the movie trotted out one story trope after another. It’s hard to go into it in detail without spoiling plot points, but I’m going to give it a try.

 

For one thing, given that the movie’s plot hinges on whether Lofthouse makes contact with the Aether, the film leans heavily on coincidence to throw one obstacle after another into the characters’ way just to keep things interesting. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; I’ve enjoyed plenty of movies with the dreaded deus ex machina or its negative counterpart, but Clooney lays it on a bit too thickly here. There are too many things here that happen not as a result of the characters’ choices but because the plot needs them to happen, like ill-timed meteor showers and snow storms.

 

And then, it infuriated me that I was able to entirely predict what was going to happen to a character because of the color of their skin. That’s the kind of trope that was cliché twenty years ago; for Clooney to use it now just feels unforgivable.  

 

That’s the problem when a movie has the thinnest of plots; the filmmakers often resort to all kinds of contrivances to bloat the running time and keep people engaged. This was the kind of nonsense I would have expected from some B-movie on cable, not a big-budget Netflix movie with one of Hollywood’s A-listers at the helm.  Sure, the movie’s got great production value, visual effects, yadda yadda yadda, but for the money they spent on this, it damn well better have those things.

 

I have to say, from where I’m sitting Clooney’s filmography as a director seems a lot less illustrious than his resume as an actor and a producer. I mean, this guy won an Oscar for producing Argo; it seems unthinkable that he was behind this turkey.  Now I’m wondering if he hasn’t been a somewhat overrated director all this time.

 

5/10

Tarantino for Hillbillies: A Review of The Devil All the Time

 directed by Antonio Campos

written by Antonio and Paulo Campos 

based on the book by Donald Ray Pollock

Last night, having re-watched the live-action/animation hybrid Saving Sally (a wonderful, if conspicuously flawed movie) I decided to try watching my first Netflix original film since Enola Holmes, and settled on The Devil All the Time, a film I had actually started watching before I had even watched the Sherlock Holmes fanfic, but which I had not finished on the belief that it was a horror movie (owing to the fact that it starred Bill Skarsgard, also known as Pennywise the Clown, and featured an extremely bloody scene early in the film), and therefore something I would not want to watch. Well, after my daughter told me that it was a drama (albeit an extremely violent one)  I decided to check it out, having had my fill of binge watching cartoons for several weeks in a row.

And boy, it could not have been more different.

When Willard Russell, a PTSD afflicted veteran of World War II (Bill Skarskard) comes home, having been deeply-scarred by the war and the disturbing sight of a mangled, skinned but still alive U.S. marine crucified by the Japanese, he settles down in Knockemstiff, Ohio with a charming waitress named Charlotte (Haley Benett) and they have a son, Arvin (Michael Banks Repeta).  Willard, however, is never quite the same. Having abandoned conventional religion, he sets up a makeshift altar in the woods near his home, where he takes his son to pray. His prayers become more frantic when Charlotte falls terminally ill, and when Willard does the unthinkable, Arvin is shipped off to live in Cold Creek, West Virginia with his grandmother Emma (Kristin Griffith) and his uncle Earskell (David Atkinson).  As it happens, Emm and Earskell have also adopted an oprhaned young girl, Leonora, whose mother Helen (Mia Wasikowska) has befallen tragedy at the hands of her preacher husband Roy (Harry Melling), who, himself later fell victim to roving serial killers Carl (Jason Clarke) and Sandy (Riley Keogh), who operate with impunity because Sandy's brother is the corrupt Sheriff of Meade, Ohio, Lee (Sebastian Stan).  

Years later Arvin has grown up to be a troubled teen (Tom Holland) albeit one devoted to his unconventional family consisting of his grandmother, his uncle and his adopted sister Lenora (Eliza Scanlen). When a charismatic new preacher, Reverend Teagardin (Robert Pattinson) moves into Cold Creek, Arvin's grandmother is eager to please and offers him a meal together with the other parishioners, but ends up humiliated. Things get even worse, though, when Teagardin sets his sights on the lonely Lenora, who visits her mother's grave by the church every day. The events that follow set Arvin on a violent path of no return, one that will lead him back to where it all started: Knockemstiff, Ohio. 

As is the case with many films, I cannot go in depth into how I really feel about this movie without spoiling crucial plot points, so I will say that while the strong performances from actors like Holland, Pattinson and Skarsgard are quite compelling, all them feel a bit wasted considering that they are basically in service of a story that just feels promoting violence for the sake of violence.

There seem to be hints of a critique on religion, based on, well, the title, and the depictions of the war-traumatized Willard, the fanatical preacher Roy who dumps spiders on himself during his sermons to show his congregation his faith, and the slimy Teagardin, but it doesn't seem to be the most in-depth or intelligent commentary on a topic that often makes for compelling fiction.  At least two of those characters are sterling examples of mental illness rather than the ills of religion, and one is just a plain old predator. Also, there's plenty of evil on display from people who don't really identify as religious as all, like the corrupt Sheriff Lee or killers Carl and Sandy, so the film doesn't really make a coherent stab at addressing organized (or for that matter, disorganized) religion.  

What the film, to me at least, seems intent on doing is riling up the audience to make them root for the rash of violence that rages throughout the third act, but unlike Quentin Tarantino, who is generally able to balance even the most gratuitous violence with judicious storytelling and leaven it somehow with humor, writer/director Antonio Campos basically just sets  his  characters on a collision course with the third-act bloodbath, and does its best to get us to cheer for it. 

However, for all of the committed performances by the talented actors in this film, I could not. There's a distinct act of cold-blooded murder that happens well into the film, and we're meant to root for it, and the performers almost sell it, but in the end, it is what it is.  I'm not a huge fan of movies that so transparently try to manipulate me into feeling a certain way (which is one reason I hate horror movies) and I definitely don't care much for a movie that tries to tap into some inner bloodlust the filmmaker is hoping to unleash in its audiences. 

So apart from the spectacle of Tom Holland as a violent hillbilly or Robert Pattinson as a slimy degenerate pastor, there really is not much to see here. 

 

6/10

So...I'm Reviewing Netflix Movies Now: Enola Holmes

 directed by Harry Bradbeer

written by Jack Thorn (from the book by Mary Springer)

Like most people around the world, I have seen my former pastime of physically going to watch movies at the mall grind to a halt as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. 

I've never been the biggest fan of Netflix, but lately, since my wife upgraded our subscription I've been binge-watching quite a few of their original animated series with my two younger children like The Dragon Prince, the new Transformers series and most recently, the mammoth Voltron: Legendary Defender.  

As a result, I naturally saw ads for Enola Holmes and decided to check it out. 

Enola Holmes is the story of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes' previously unknown sister Enola, played by Stranger Things' breakout star Millie Bobbie Brown.  Raised in a somewhat unorthodox way by her progressive mother Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter) who teaches her a variety of skills, including martial arts, Enola is a real firecracker, albeit one content to live on her mother's estate until, one day, she wakes up to find her gone.  When her brothers, namely government official Mycroft (Sam Claflin) and renowned detective Sherlock (Henry Cavill) offer Enola no help in finding Eudoria, with Mycroft even planning to send Enola off to finishing school, she sneaks off and sets out to find her mother on her own. While on a train, she encounters the Viscount Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge), a young noble on the run from his family, who, as Enola discovers, has a somewhat deadly pursuer (Burn Gorman) and a somewhat complicated story, which could actually determine the future of England itself. As she searches for her mother, she comes to realize that there is far more to the Tewkesbury affair that a boy running away from home.

I can appreciate fan fiction of popular characters, provided it's done well, and while it's far from a perfect film, Enola Holmes is an enjoyable enough bit of fanfic, in no small part due to Millie Bobbie Brown's charismatic performance which is punctuated by her frequent fourth-wall breaking.  It's considerably lighter in tone than any of the recent Sherlock Holmes adaptations (we shall not speak of the Will Ferrel/John C. Reilly clusterf**k) with the exception of some brief action violence, and if I'm honest, I feel it really achieves a lot of what it sets out to achieve.

As a period film, it's got a decent helping of production value, with the Victorian (or is it Edwardian) era well captured in the cinematography, art direction and costume design. 

As a whodunit, well, it could just be my age showing but the writers kind of telegraphed their secret long before the climactic revelation of who the real baddie was. 

Perhaps the most awkward thing about the movie, though, was how both Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes were reduced to little better than bumbling idiots. Basically, the writers resorted to the tired old trope of making the female character look good by, well emasculating the males. Henry Cavill, the third superhero actor to play the world famous detective after Robert Downey, Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch, has the distinction of (arguably) looking the most dapper in his period clothes but even though he's miles more sympathetic than the openly misogynistic caricature that is Mycroft, in the end he's quite emphatically second fiddle to the title character. It's good for a laugh, I suppose, but it still felt like lazy writing, and this movie did deserve better, considering there was quite a bit of decent dialogue here and there.

Still engaging peformances from Brown and Partridge more than make up for this film's shortcomings.  There's just the right the right amount of thrills and derring-do for an adaptation from a young adult book. There's a bit of romantic tension between Enola and the young Viscount but fortunately the filmmakers handle it quite tastefully, and ultimately, it had something meaningful to say about the state of society without banging the "woke" drum too loudly, and certainly not at the expense of an overall  entertaining story. 

Given what I imagine was a relatively small budget, a high viewer count per Netflix's reporting and Brown's popularity I imagine we'll be seeing another of these at some point in the future, and if I'm honest I wouldn't mind at all. 

7.5/10