Netflix Ramblings, the Animated Edition: A Review of The Mitchells vs the Machines

 directed by Mike Rianda

written by Mike Rianda and Jeff Rowe

How do you follow up a groundbreaking, giant-killing, Oscar-winning animated film like 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse?

The short answer is, you don't; you try something completely different. 

The Mitchells vs the Machines is a sweet little family comedy about the Mitchells, a slightly off-kilter suburban family of four living in Michigan. Aspiring filmmaker Katie Mitchell (Abbie Jacobson) is about to head off to college, and it's a moment of fear and frustration for her father Rick (Danny McBride) who feels unable to connect not only with Katie but with his wife Linda (Maya Rudolph) and son Aaron (Mike Rianda) who spend most of their time together buried in their gadgets. It comes to a head when Rick accidentally breaks the monitor of Katie's laptop, and decides to make it up to her by driving her all the way to college on the other side of the country.  

Meanwhile, at an event in Silicone Valley, Mark Bowman (Eric Andre) a sort of Elon Musk/Mark Zuckerberg mashup, creator of the revolutionary, phone-based virtual assistant PAL (Olivia Colman), launches her replacement, PAL MAX, which is housed in a fleet of robots, only to discover that hell hath no fury like a virtual assistant scorned. PAL takes over her would-be replacement by taking control of Bowman's robots and uses them to round up apparently every human in the world. Through a combination of accident and idiocy, the Mitchells, right smack in the middle of their road-trip from hell, somehow manage to evade capture and it ultimately falls on them to save humanity; if only they can get their s ** t together first.And for the first time, they'll have to set (almost) all their gadgets aside to do it.

Kudos to Sony Pictures Animation for telling a story that, in this day and age of people needing more than ever before to connect with one another, dares to point out our collective slavery to gadgets (like the laptop on which I'm typing this review ) and our collective lack of actual human connection. It's a hilarious little fable about a family that, just like any other, struggles to keep it together, with a frustrated artisan of a father not wanting his daughter to repeat his mistakes and endure his heartbreak, and a daughter who wants nothing to do with her seemingly out-of-touch dad. There are, of course, lessons to be learned in the end, by both father and daughter, and by humanity in general as they come this close to being launched into space by a phone app.

It's not quite the gobsmacker that Into the Spider-Verse was, but it never aims to be, and like most Sony Animation pics (yes, even the Hotel Transylvania pics) it has its unique visual sensibility that would prevent anyone of accusing them of being Pixar wannabes. The script is loaded with its fair share of tropes, with one third-act revelation of an eavesdropped conversation feeling particularly cringe-inducing, but it's still an engaging script.  

The film has, in a remarkably subtle way, broken ground. It features the first ever openly queer lead character, without the hated "virtue signaling" or anything particularly ostentatious in the script. This stands in stark contrast to Disney's habit of trumpeting its "first ever" gay extras or peripheral characters in films from Pixar, Star Wars and Marvel. Good work showing up Disney yet again, Sony. 

With Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse  Sony Animation, as a creative force, had finally arrived, and while The Mitchells vs the Machines is not quite on the same level, it shows that they're here to stay.

8/10

Netflix Prestige Presentations: A Review of Mank

 directed by David Fincher

written by Jack Fincher

As I write this, the Academy Awards for 2021 have just been handed out, and while David Fincher's Mank led the pack with 10 nominations, it only walked away with some technical awards, with the big winner of the night being Chloe Zhao's Nomadland.  I haven't seen Nomadland, not having Disney+, so I couldn't possibly comment on whether or not it deserved its win, but having seen Mank it is with some confidence that I can say that it would not have been a worthy Best Picture winner. It is far from David Fincher's best and I think it's fair to say that it was not the year's best film, either. 

Mank is the dramatization of the true story of the late screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, played in the film by previous Oscar-winner Gary Oldman. More specifically, the film focuses on Mank's journey towards writing the film that came to define his career, the late Orson Welles' magnum opus Citizen Kane. It takes place in two different time periods: the first period, or the "present day" is the 60 days in 1940 in which Mank, in a secluded cottage while convalescing from a car accident, writes the script for Citizen Kane with the assistance of typewriter Rita Alexander (Lily Collins), and under the watchful eye of nurse Frieda (Monika Gossmann) and producer John Houseman (Sam Troughton), while the second period or the "past" spans the years 1934 to 1937, in which the events play out in Mank's career with studio Metro Goldwyn Mayer which ultimately inspire him to write the script for Kane, which is a thinly-veiled reference to media mogul William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance).

In the present day, Mank feels the pressure early on when Welles (Tom Burke) cuts his initial 90-day deadline to 60 days. Welles removes all distractions, spiking Mank's alcohol, to which he is hopelessly addicted, with a sedative and even keeping him separate from his wife Sara (Tuppence Middleton). These safeguards notwithstanding, the 60 days prove to be a hair-raising experience for all involved.  

In the part of the movie set in his past, Mank, then one of the leading lights at MGM, is basically at the height of his screenwriting career, enjoying the trust of MGM honchos Louis Mayer (Arliss Howard) and Irving Thalberg (Ferdinand Kingsley) and schmoozing with Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfriend).  At first, Mank tries to ignore his boss's seeming lack of compassion when Mayer gives most studio employees a 50% pay cut, but when progressive Democrat Upton Sinclair (Bill Nye) runs against Republican Frank Merrier, Thalberg and Mayer, who support the Republican, do the unthinkable to help him win.  When he finds out who bankrolled this shameful abuse of the studio's talents, Mank is set on his path to writing Citizen Kane. 

There are creative choices I don't really agree with in this film, like the fact that Mank's dispute with Orson Welles over screenwriting credit is reduced to an argument between them in the dying minutes of the film, and what amounts to a footnote in the story. I get, though that David Fincher, working from a script from his late father Jack, wanted to focus on Mank's battle with his studio after a really terrible stunt they pulled in support of a politician, and on how he came to train his sights on Hearst, a powerful man who had every means at his disposal to ruin him. 

The problem with the Mank/Hearst feud as presented in the film is that, no matter how much Fincher wants to convince the audience of how betrayed Mank feels by his friend Hearst, there is little to no connection established between Mank and Hearst up until the great big exposition dump Mank makes when he gatecrashes Hearst's party and makes a drunken speech.  He basically tells the audience why he feels betrayed by Hearst, even though, for the uninitiated--like myself--who know nothing of Hearst, there is nothing in the film's narrative that even suggests any sort of deep relationship between them that would be undermined by betrayal. Heck, Mank doesn't even share more than a few lines of dialogue with Hearst all throughout the movie before that pivotal end point, with the closest thing to an onscreen connection between them being Mank's platonic relationship with Davies. 

It's genuinely disappointing that someone as consummately professional as David Fincher would try to get the audience to buy into a "shocker" that he didn't earn. Fincher structures the narrative as a kind of mystery, asking the audience the question: what would get a writer like Mank, who had the world as his oyster, to take on one of the most powerful men in America? The revelation, for all of the flourish that Fincher attempts to attach to it, lands with an unfortunate thud.

One shining light of this film, though, is Gary Oldman, who pours his heart into his performance, even though at 61 he looked a bit strange playing a 43-year-old, even though the fortysomething in question was an alcoholic. It didn't help that Fincher surrounded Oldman with mostly appropriately-aged actors as Mank's peers, like his wife and brother.  To his credit, Oldman still made it work, and in the end it was Fincher, with his unfortunate narrative choices, who let him down. 
  

7/10

Seen on Netflix: A Review of Love and Monsters

 directed by Michael Matthews

writteny by Brian Duffield and Matthew Robinson

Like News of the World, this isn't a Netflix film but one produced by a "traditional" studio (in this case Paramount Pictures) which received a limited release last year but which, due to the pandemic, mainly saw release through streaming platforms, which in our territory means Netflix. 

Love and Monsters is yet another apocalypse movie, albeit this time with a comedic twist and with a slightly different take on the subject; this time humans haven't been overrun by a zombie plague but have, instead, been decimated to the point of near annihilation by cold-blooded creatures like reptiles, amphibians and insects of every size and shape, all of which have mutated into giants as a result of chemical fallout from missiles that were  fired at an asteroid which almost destroyed the Earth.

Joel Dawson (Dylan O'Brien, no stranger to apocalyptic wastelands) has, following this cataclysmic event in which giant frogs, lizards and insects basically took over the world and drove humans underground, lived in an underground bunker in the last seven years with his "colony" a group of strapping young men and women---all of whom have managed to romantically couple, leaving him the odd-man out. On top of this, the trauma of losing his parents has left Joel prone to freezing in the face of peril, which means that rather than go out and fight the monsters with his fellow survivors, he's been the designated cook for seven years.

Through all of this, though, one thought keeps him going: the memory of his girlfriend Aimee (Jessica Henwick) from whom he was separated just before the world as he knew it ended and whom he has finally reconnected with after years of searching for her on the radio. When a catastrophic invasion by a giant ant results in the death of one of his fellow colony members, Joel realizes he doesn't want to die alone, and so against everyone's advice, he takes a backpack, a makeshift crossbow and heads for Amy's colony, an 85-mile, seven-day trek across giant-monster-infested territory.  Along the way, he makes friends with a dog named Boy, and a tough-as-nails pair of survivors in fifty/sixtysomething Clyde (Michael Rooker) and eight-year-old Minnow (Ariana Greenblatt). Will he make it to Aimee...or even survive?

As apocalyptic films go, this one is more of a Shaun of the Dead than a Dawn of the Dead, so even though it borrows heavily from a lot of the really grim movies in the genre, like I Am Legend which also featured a character traveling with a dog, and The Mist, which also featured horrific giant monsters instead of the usual zombies, to name but a few, it manages a comedic tone that actually works in spite of the traditionally dark setting. It's an ultimately inconsequential movie, but that may be exactly what we need in times like these. 

It helps that O'Brien successfully makes the transition from his action-drama days of The Maze Runner trilogy to action-comedy.  His awkward dork Joel is a pretty big departure from his highly-capable lead Thomas from the older films, but O'Brien sells the character well. It also helps that he has a good supporting cast to play off of, particularly Rooker, Greenblatt (whom many viewers may recognize as young Gamora from Avengers: Infinity War) and Dodge, the supremely expressive dog who plays Boy. 

It also helps that, even on a shoestring budget of USD30 million, the filmmakers have managed to create a film that is wonderfully atmospheric, with the wilds of Australia's Gold Coast and other locations standing in for the wastelands of California.  So effective is the art direction in terms of establishing the post-apocalyptic vibe that even though the computer-generated monsters are relatively few and far between, each appearance makes an impact.  It's also worth noting that even in spite of a relatively small budget, the film features some genuinely impressive computer-generated, super-sized critters to terrorize our hero.

It's hardly a compelling commentary on the human condition and certainly not meant to be a life-changing experience, notwithstanding a slightly hokey speech at around the end of the film, but as movies to enjoy in the midst of the pandemic go, it feels like just what the doctor ordered.

8.5/10

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