DEAD CALM

By Marc S. Sanders

During the summer of sequels in 1989 (Lethal Weapon 2, Ghostbusters 2, Indiana Jones 3, Batman 1, Dalton/James Bond 2), Phillip Noyce directed a sleeper thriller that took place in the middle of the ocean with only three actors at his disposal.  Nicole Kidman and Sam Neill play the married couple who are looking for a needed escape following the loss of their child in a car accident.  Billy Zane is the psycho who upends their oasis on the seas.  It all leads to Dead Calm.

The tricks of Noyce’s film are familiar formula.  The wife is terrorized.  The husband is left helpless.  The nutjob killer has his way with the whole routine until he gets conveniently careless for a split second.  Fortunately, the trio of actors are very capable.  The script needed more invention, however.

In the middle of nowhere, on a clear day, the sailboat navigated by Rae and John (Kidman, Neill) come upon a large sinking ship.  Only one survivor emerges from the vessel in a rowboat coming right for them.  His name is Hughie (Zane) and he doesn’t have much to say of what happened.  All he’s got to aid him are his swim trunks and his stamina.  Otherwise, he’s very disoriented. The couple welcomes him on board and while he rests down below in a locked cabin, John goes out to the damaged ship to uncover what occurred, leaving Rae alone with Hughie. 

Upon discovering some sinister trappings have taken place, John desperately rows back to his boat before Rae is subjected to Hughie’s unwelcome intentions.  He’s not successful.  The sailboat takes off, leaving John marooned in open water with only the sinking boat left behind.  It’s at this point, I started to give up on Dead Calm.

One opportunity after another leaves Rae with the chance to get the upper hand.  Yet, she doesn’t take advantage.  It’s never confusing to see Hughie for what he is. After all, he abandoned her husband at sea!!!! Rae sees this with her own eyes!!!!!  At best, she takes to the on-board radio and radar, attempting to contact and locate John.  Yet, she does nothing to protect herself, leaving Hughie to roam and plot and terrorize.  At least pick up a steak knife to fend off your intruder.  Rae never arms herself with anything until long after Hughie has the upper hand.  She even willingly subjects herself to Hughie’s advances in a scene that is just icky and carried on far longer than necessary. 

Noyce’s script has no respect for Kidman’s portrayal of Rae.  I bet she’d still be an intelligent, strategic woman, despite her recent trauma of burying a child.  Nevertheless, the screenplay restricts the character’s wisdom and intuition for the sake of stretching out the picture.  Phillip Noyce should have been more open minded to the idea that Dead Calm could have found its sea legs by making the sailboat a one-on-one arena for woman against man.  Nicole Kidman can take on Billy Zane.  Let the girl stand up for herself.  However, it’d be absurd for the female to be the hero, right?  The woman’s purpose is to be the damsel in distress.  Reader, as a versatile actor, Nicole Kidman is a lot of things.  She should never be a damsel.

Sam Neill’s participation works like a separate storyline.  Left to his own devices, alone on the sinking ship, he must use his character’s mariner skills to catch up with his boat that is long out of sight.  Believably, the setting works against him with an engine that won’t start and water levels rising.  As well, there is plenty of information provided to paint a picture of the antagonist that John and his wife are up against.  It’s not all spelled out, but there’s enough to realize danger is within reach, thereby upholding the suspense. 

Phillip Noyce and his set design crews do good work at gradually diminishing the integrities of both boats.  Water quickly rises, wood splinters through doorways, planks and floors, sails become undone, things capsize, and equipment and utensils scatter as the action increases. 

Regrettably, the ending tacks on the unworthy “killer come to life” for one last hurrah.  It’s ridiculous Friday The 13th tripe and opens one more opportunity for Rae to shut off her intuition to serve the helpless victim element.

I can’t forgive the absentmindedness of Kidman’s character.  This woman is so much brighter than Phillip Noyce gives her credit.  Even at this young age, before she became a top billing star with an Oscar, Nicole Kidman was working on a more advanced level than the material she was given.

CHARADE

By Marc S. Sanders

I’d always heard that Stanley Donen’s Charade was the definitive Hitchcock movie that was not directed by Alfred Hitchcock.  Maybe that’s true.  Yet, having watched it over sixty years after its release, I get the feeling this paved the way for other comedy/thrillers like what Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn did in Foul Play or Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepard accomplished with Moonlighting.  Remington Steele is another example. There’s a killer on the loose.  Nevertheless, that shouldn’t stop anyone from engaging in fun flirtations without breaking a sweat in some of the most strikingly colorful costume wear that Givenchy can provide.  

Audrey Hepburn is Reggie Lampert a woman ready to divorce her husband Charles due to a loveless marriage.  When she returns to Paris from a skiing retreat she finds their apartment has been emptied.  Mr. Bartholomew (Walter Matthau) calls Reggie into the American Embassy and explains that Charles was murdered and thrown from a train.  He also had ties with the CIA.  During the war, his military unit came upon a trove of a quarter of a million dollars.  The other members of that unit are likely looking for the money and they will go after Reggie to get it.  She has no idea what Charles was involved with or what he did for a living or how he made his fortunes.

Peter Joshua (Cary Grant, a Hitchcock regular) comes in and out of Reggie’s life.  She trusts Peter, but then gets skeptical of his charm when a truth becomes inconsistent.  He has an explanation for everything, and the cycle of good faith starts all over again.  

Charade is predictable, right from start, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a lot of fun.  Henry Mancini’s soundtrack keeps Donen’s picture peppy as Audrey Hepburn dodges suspects with Cary Grant’s assistance.  The movie doesn’t rush for the inevitable romantic kiss between the two leads.  The fast talking lines pace their performances.

The men in pursuit are James Coburn with a supply of threatening cigarettes to burn, a nerdy Ned Glass and George Kennedy looking like an imposing Bond henchman with an iron claw for a hand and a belted trenchcoat.  They all stand apart, and one of them could be the killer with a little more to collect on the apparent fortune to be found.

The Hitchcokian comparison stems from the recognizable structure of his pictures.  I don’t deny the familiarity.  Yet, most of Hitch’s films operate on a more sinister level.  Then again there was To Catch A Thief with Cary Grant and that movie could have been part of the same universe as Charade.  I simply credit Donen’s film with what it inevitability inspired as opposed to where it seems to have been sourced from.  

The story sets in motion the meet cute romance of Hepburn and Grant, and despite the clear age difference they’re also charming together.  Try finding a Gen X leading man who could shower with his suit on for an amused Audrey Hepburn.  Try finding a leading woman of today who could be so taken with a such a silly demonstration from a leading man.  Cursing and crude bathroom humor were never necessary for these two.

When a movie opens with a troublemaking kid shooting a squirt gun in the kissers of both Audrey and Cary you immediately recognize the lighthearted tempo of this picture.  These two sophisticates are ready to minimize their dignity while racing through a romp in beautiful Paris, France.  I was happy to run along with them.  

THE ODYSSEY

By Marc S. Sanders

It seems that Christopher Nolan is left challenged by one thing – himself.  In less than thirty years this director/producer/writer has moved from the simplest of filmmaking with limited funds (Following, Memento) to enormous heights in bonanza showmanship like The Odyssey, the first movie to be completely shot with IMAX cameras.  These devices are expensive and according to Nolan, they are also heavy and overbearingly noisy.  Yet, IMAX accommodated the filmmaker with specialized boxes to contain their equipment and muffle the sound interference.  As such, The Odyssey is a wonder to the eye.  Frankly, as impressed as I was with the film, on the most ideal IMAX screen available, I still didn’t see anything that felt any grander than the latest Dune offerings.  I mean how far are my pair of 20/15 LASIK eyes supposed to decipher?  Don’t get me wrong.  I am impressed.  However, was I as impressed as I was supposed to be? Should I be nitpicking pixels here?

IMAX says it all though.  The landscapes of open desert plains and vast open waters are brilliantly captured.  I could never tell you of any inconsistencies or shortcomings.  Costumes serve just as any sword and sandal picture that came before.  The sound, especially in an IMAX theater, is immersive and deafening as expected. Tidal waves within blinding rainstorms demonstrate this wholeheartedly.  The cast is stacked with some of the best talent available. The Odyssey has everything it demands of its legacy and what’s expected of a Christopher Nolan film.  Yet, I was never emotionally invested in the picture.  Understand that Christopher Nolan knows how to reach an audience on a primordial level of emotions. Think back to Matthew McConaughey’s tearful moment in Interstellar or how he shares scenes with young Mackenzie Foy. Look at Christian Bale’s anguish during the middle section of The Dark Knight. Hugh Jackman and Bale compete for moments of deep rage and sadness within The Prestige.

Nolan wrote his adaptation of Homer’s poetically romantic adventure.  I recall reading it in high school.  The fat, floppy, black paperback that weighed down my book bag has never been forgotten.  The highlights of the story remain in my consciousness from the Trojan Horse to Helen Of Troy (the face that launched a thousand ships), and of course the central plot of having the famed Odysseus making his long awaited journey home.  It’s all here, and then there’s more including the towering Cyclops and Circe, the witch who can turn men into pigs.  Nolan’s film goes from chapter to chapter, beat by beat.  This easily could have been a ten-episode miniseries on HBO MAX, and people would eagerly watch every Sunday night.

I favor Nolan’s choice to rely on modern dialogue, without rooted domestic accents or dialects. It’s a wise choice when delivering a poetic opus to the screen. This movie is a story. It likely would not relate to audiences on a poetic level structured in stanzas. Homer’s work does not lend to dialogue like Shakespeare or Mamet. A friend took issue with referring to Odysseus and Penelope as “mom” and “dad.” I get it. Nolan’s picture is much bigger than Harry Potter. However, the characters are bonded as family. So, it’s a pick your preference kind of situation. You either embrace or it takes you out of the story on occasion.

I’m not sure what I can say that this beast of a film says for itself.  If you’re not dazzled by simply one shred of a moment in this picture, then you are impossible to satisfy. Consider me wowed, but I was not moved.  The same way that I was never absorbed with Homer’s piece.  It was a homework assignment that spanned a long month of my junior year.  As a film lover, it’s inevitable that I see this picture. If it’s the first complete IMAX picture from beginning to end, then yeah, I’m spending the extra money to see it that way.  Am I going to watch it on repeat, on home video 4K? Probably never on a whim.  It’s a chore.

First, the picture seems to presume the viewers have prior knowledge of elements like the battle of Troy and why the war took place before we see how the famed Trojan Horse led to Odysseus’ (Matt Damon) victory with his army.  I don’t recall all that merited the action, but Nolan’s footage is astounding, especially that enormous horse on its hind legs.  On screen, the figure is as towering as the Statue of Liberty. No wonder the thing is being sold as a popcorn bucket.  

As complex as Christopher Nolan’s films can be (Interstellar, Inception), I always thought he was great at spelling out his unique brands of formula.  It took me a good hour or more to pencil down who everyone is playing and what purpose they serve in The Odyssey.  It boasts a big cast of celebrities who are all given their moments to shine.  I was especially taken with Samantha Morton’s Circe, introduced as a helpless woman grotesquely ready to reveal something more.  Robert Pattinson is Antoninus, a bratty and cowardly adversary ready to assume rule now that Odysseus has not returned.  He truly owns the picture when the focus turns back to him amid the rest of the cast and extras that occupy the room.

Anne Hathaway as Odysseus’ wife Penelope demonstrates nice range away from her Prada films and warm-hug kinds of pictures.  She looks quite unfamiliar while leaning into what you’d expect from Cate Blanchett.  Tom Holland drops the adolescent mischief of Spider-Man to play Telemachus, the son who takes it upon himself to uncover where his father could be after being gone for two decades.

Lupita Nyong’o may not look like she belongs in a story originated in Greek fiction, but she serves her small but significant role(s) with fierceness.  I’m not petty enough to let the appearance or history of an actor diminish my experience of seeing a sensational performance.  The same goes for Elliot Page in a crucial cameo.  As an aside, knock it off with the woke protests. Theatre is theatre and this is centered in mythology with a Cyclops of all things. If the Romans of Gladiator can speak with English accents, then in the fiction of Hollywoodland, casting has no limits.

I do not think the finished product The Odyssey is a new kind of novelty for filmmaking.  Christopher Nolan is taking advantage of the latest advancements that Peter Jackson did with his Lord Of The Rings and Hobbit trilogies.  If Nolan didn’t make this movie, Jackson would likely step up.  The swordplay and battles are as similar as most anything else that’s sent out each year.  Nolan has not reinvented the wheel in that aspect.  Likely he’s done it with how he made this picture.  That’s a blessing and a curse.  

The Odyssey is seamless, but how am I to recognize what’s done better here than what Jackson or Denis Villanelle has accomplished with their works?  I guess I had to be on set.  Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway and company testify to how astounding the experience has been.  I choose to believe them though I can’t compound what was embarked. For example, the actors enthusiastically celebrate the director’s idea to have then perform speaking to the mirror image of their scene partners. The mirror was mounted next to the IMAX lens and thus reduced time and cost for reshoots with the bulky and expensive equipment. Something like that. See, I do not see the advantage of this technique when I’m sitting in the theatre. There it is, though. Amazing! Incredible! It can be the greatest hot dog I’ve ever savored. Yet, I never went to the sausage factory.

I know my enthusiasm does not measure up to what so many others are saying.  The Odyssey is just an overwhelming picture.  The storytelling seems all too familiar, and yet not everything feels completely clear and decipherable.  Visually, it will always be stunning, even on a 55-inch flat screen. I wish Nolan offered more definition to the giant Cyclops (played by the master of mime and body manipulation, famed Ringling performer Bill Irwin who was TARS in Interstellar).  The movie will easily sweep all the technical awards while only earning acting nominations for Morton and maybe Hathaway.  Matt Damon earns recognition for exerting himself like never before in muscle mass. He’s only improved what he’s physically done in the Bourne films, for example.

This is a major hurdle that Christopher Nolan has elevated to, and a new bar has been set at a taller height.  Still, this picture never stayed with me like his Dark Knight trilogy that covered everything from sensational action to questions of morality. His brainy science fiction challenged protagonists to extend themselves towards sheer impossibilities of comprehension like Inception, Interstellar, or The Prestige.  Even a biographical story like Oppenheimer left me more emotionally consumed than The Odyssey, because the title character served as a puppeteered villain to everyone else, including himself internally.  Odysseus leans on Athena for solace, played by Zendaya, serving as an imaginary friend to the hero. He’s marooned with Calypso (Charlize Theron) serving as a sounding board while Odysseus struggles to recollect the memories of his adventures. All the parts are here like a grocery shopping list, but the connections just don’t feel as warm as they were in Nolan’s other pieces.

That’s okay though.  We all have our favorite flavors of ice cream. Just like we all have our favorite efforts of Christopher Nolan.

What’s this guy gonna do next? I cannot wait to find out because it’s never simplistic and always challenging with a sense of thrill and knowledge.

INTERSTELLAR

By Marc S. Sanders

On a rewatch of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar it is no wonder he eventually went on to adapt Homer’s The Odyssey into a fully realized film.  The classic sci-fi picture, which draws inspiration from Stanely Kubrick’s work while likely springboarding off of Arthur C Clarke’s and Isaac Asimov’s ideas, is an ambitious undertaking.  It’s not Star Wars with lasers and aliens, but it is slightly Star Trek with missions bent on discovery. Its fiction is rooted in true science and that’s precisely why it should be taken seriously; never taken for granted. 

Like The Odyssey, the story from Nolan with his writing partner and brother Jonathan, sets out on a far off journey that will take travelers decades into the future of a fictional future with an uncertainty of survival or a return back to Earth.  Loved ones back home remain in wait and worry.  The Nolans had to be thinking of Homer’s poetic opus while undertaking Interstellar.  The parallels are just so clear, welcoming fresh perspectives for both films.

Matthew McConaughey is Cooper, a former astronaut, now corn crop farmer and widower.  He is raising his son Tom (Timothée Chalamet) and daughter Murphy (Mackenzie Foy) who is choosing to follow in her father’s footsteps of accurate science and astronomy.  His father-in-law (John Lithgow) is tending to the family at the home and likely by default because Cooper was never meant to be a homemaker.  He was meant to soar among the stars.

The children’s school serves to prep them for farming and deny even the simplest theories of science, especially when Murph opts to write reports that back up such conjecture.  Cooper is on her side.  Yet, the school faculty deny any of the historic Apollo missions of the twentieth century and college is not a primary goal for students. Preparation for farm life is what’s needed. Wild legends that propagandize technological competitions in races to space with the Soviet Union lend no use or value to surviving on an Earth stricken with food shortages. Farming is what the world has to focus on.

Interstellar reveals that an interruption in Earth’s gravity is causing punishing sandstorms, more familiarly reminiscent of the dustbowl era from the 1930s. Technology is not cooperative, nor is it tolerable for the government. Even military service is no longer needed. Therefore, farming has become the most necessary industry to rely upon. The world these characters occupy is plagued with an extreme shortage of food while nitrogen is expected to replace the availability of oxygen. If the people of Earth don’t starve, they’ll suffocate.  For example, as the film begins the last crops of okra have run out for the entire planet Earth.  Wheat is also in short supply. Corn is becoming the standard on a planet that gets globally bombarded with punishing sandstorms. 

Through odd circumstances, Cooper and Murph meet up with the last remaining folks at a classified NASA facility, operating from a clandestine nowhere locale, led by leading science expert Professor Brand (Michael Caine) with assistance from his daughter, Amelia (Anne Hathaway).  They urge Cooper to pilot a ship into deep space, past Saturn, beyond the reaches of a black hole, and into another galaxy to locate a new planet that the remaining survivors of Earth can inhabit. That’s Plan A.

Should all else fail, Plan B is prepared with embryos to cargo thereby establishing new generations of mankind to indefinitely prolong the human race.  Specific destinations include attempting to catch up with NASA explorers who left many years before but never returned or provided updates on their progress.  Those astronauts only had the means to search individually and separate from one another. Cooper and Amelia would attempt to rendezvous with those that left before and surmise if they discovered anything that can be habitable. This mission serves the need to leave Earth, not to save it.

Murph resents her dad’s commitment to this new mission, but he sees no other choice.  Personally, Cooper has always been a pilot and astronaut. Farming is not in his blood. He, Amelia, along with two other crew members, Romilly and Doyle (David Gyasi, Wes Bentley), will age slower than those they leave behind on Earth.  Cooper is hoping to at least return by the time Murph’s age matches up to his.  

Accompanying the crew are two robots that possess the personalities of accurate science, with a bit of programable sarcasm mixed in.  Clearly the design of TARS and CASE (Bill Irwin, Josh Stewart) are drawn from Kubrick’s monolith image, but the stand-up rectangles can sectionally move to allow leg and arm use for utility operations.  Very clever fictional engineering work going on here. Irwin is especially impressive as TARS as he put his skills with mime work and body flexibility to work. He’s actually on set, encased in a box, functionally performing as TARS.

Christopher Nolan is filmmaker who knows how to make the exposition of his pictures magnetically curious.  First off, he works best when assembles his stories with a circular narration. Little details are disclosed and then left behind to reveal information about another subject and then another. Nothing may appear connected. However, often his movies will later go back to what’s only been hinted out and uncover an important purpose. Books falling off a shelf in the upstairs bedroom do not say much until you realize that there’s a message there. Dust particles descending in an organized pattern lend to an environment but may also serve a clue. On a first watch, and maybe even on the second and third view, it’s at least a welcome challenge to decipher the time period of the story and why even some of the most minute details serve so importantly. Christopher Nolan prefers to work with some brainy stuff.

Interstellar never feels like a chore even when you try to comprehend the complex debates among its characters.  Hathaway and McConaughey haggle over which planet to visit next.  Their resources far into this new galaxy will not enable them to visit both locations.  So, how important and powerful is love, bent on a personal desire, when the future of mankind is at stake? Should romanticism tip the scale of the crew’s decision? The travels through space offer unusual challenges that hardly mimic anything I’ve ever seen on a Star Trek episode.  

Back on earth, the children grow into adults played by Casey Affleck and Jessica Chastain, both very good at being disagreeable siblings living on a world that is quickly deteriorating while mounting dirt exposure affects the family’s health.  Affleck’s portrayal of Tom is focused on upholding crop supplies to defy worldwide starvation. Chastain’s portrayal of Murph works with Caine’s character, continuing his research that is expected to resolve the last variables of seeking a new planet to relocate the residents of Earth.  Contrary to Tom, Murph is working ahead of an inevitable loss by applying her knowledge of science to pioneer a more sensible solution.

A side story dating back to Murph’s youth revolves around a “ghost” who resides behind the bookshelf upstairs.  Out of nowhere, one book after another will topple off a shelf.  (A nice detail by Nolan is to have Stephen King’s dystopian novel The Stand propped up.) Are Murph and Cooper really willing to accept supernatural phenomena over what can only realistically occur? I mean we are talking about the hard truths of science here. Tom is happy to tease his little sister with the weirdness of a ghost living behind that bookshelf.

Interstellar never allows anything to be easy. Jonathan and Christopher Nolan’s script works harder at offering the unsolvable than what can lead to rescue and resolution. Science of any kind never makes anything easy. Even humanity can unexpectedly betray its best intentions. Things go awry in space and on Earth causing more setbacks and distance apart and therefore presenting less likelihood of success.  Yet, what’s effective is that Christopher Nolan treats his picture like a documentary.  Peppered through the first forty minutes of the film are elderly people offering up interview recollections of what it’s been like to live with meteorological dirt storms that intrude upon their homes and outer environments.  They have to turn their dishes upside down to keep them as clean as possible.  They need to wear masks and goggles. Seven years after this movie came out, ideas like this hardly seem exaggerated. The elderly folks who are being interviewed were real folks who experienced those dirt storms from the early twentieth century and participated in some of Ken Burns’ documentaries. Christopher Nolan operates on science fiction that is anything but far-fetched.

On paper, all of this would likely be the most exciting issue of Popular Science magazine ever published.  Sadly, it would never be read and rest on the coffee table in the lobby of our dentist or primary care physician. Thankfully, Nolan finds a way to thrill us through scenarios. Like 2001: A Space Odyssey (there’s that word, again), the Nolans offer first person, interior window perspectives of looking out over the wing of the space crafts.  You hardly ever get an idea of the whole dimensions of the model ships with only a select few omniscient, external views.  They want you to live within the confines of the space crafts.  Outer exhausts are emitted but when Nolan cuts in footage from the outside, the fumes are not accompanied by sound effects.  The same goes with various collisions or explosions in space.  Planet Earth may be depicted as an unlivable dust bowl, but the constructs of outer space remain unchanged.  Sound never exists in the vacuum of space.  So please have a seat Mr. Spock.

Though I wish his signature whispered twang was a little more enunciated, Matthew McConaughey is touching throughout the entire three-hour film.  Nolan captures an exceptional moment of sadness as he is able to catch up with video feeds submitted by Tom and Murph.  Try to fathom visiting a planet for the equivalent of three hours, measured on Earth, but when you return to the ship, over twenty-three years have gone by.  People back home have passed away.  Babies have been born.  Children have embarked on careers.  You might respond like Cooper does and become a mess of tears and homesickness.  It’s a one take sensational moment, beyond compare.  An absolute highlight of the actor’s career.  

Anne Hathaway is not the central character here, but she works well as a continuous counterpoint to the hypotheticals proposed by Cooper. As a contrast to Cooper the pilot, Amelia operates on exact science and though she’ll reside in an enclosed tin can of a spaceship with three men, she does not want to entertain the luxury of becoming friends. They might have endless amounts of time, journeying to Saturn and then on to another galaxy light years away, but there’s a lot of new science to uncover.   

Following Batman Begins, the director took his team back to Iceland which serves as destinations into the far reaches of outer space.  Nolan’s cameras sweep on and on and overhead to tell us there’s much to look for in these places left mostly untraveled.

Possibilities beyond imagination are treated like realistic outcomes, including ideas like communications traveling back in time by means of gravitational pulls. Things like this I completely buy but could never explain how it connects or operates.  

The Nolans accomplish what so many other pictures neglect or fail to factor including engineering, biology, astrophysics and necessary needs of survival accompanied by the philosophical natures of love.  It might sound romantic, but it’s been a long while since humanity grew out of the slime of the earth.  Love had something to do with us still breathing this air and allowing us to go see the director’s Batman movies.  

Christopher Nolan challenges us to find entertainment and wonder while he speaks on higher plains of intelligence than other standard summer blockbusters.  He’s at the other end of a wide spectrum where he’d never consider nuking an asteroid in space to save the Earth.  Something less glamorous and more overwhelming would take us out in his universe.  It would require his heroes to make bigger sacrifices than what another filmmaker might propose for Bruce Willis.  Nolan is the storyteller who is adamant that we can do better by use of scientific awareness and realistic possibilities.  

Who knows?  Incessant dust clouds might overcome the planet, accelerating its demise and forcing some of us to do things that a man like Cooper would declare “necessary.” When the glaciers finally melt away, I would not be surprised if the scientists at the time reference what Christopher Nolan considered in one of his pictures.

Nothing here feels so otherworldly or foolhardy, anymore.

Interstellar may be that sci-fi flick that’ll become required textbook studying for our children’s children’s children who live beyond the black holes of space and time.

SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY

Tom Holland’s fourth stand-alone film as the most famous web slinger of all time is his best installment and easily ranks at the very top of the very long list of MCU films.  Spider-Man: Brand New Day is a movie full of emotion, depth, and conflict ablaze in outstanding action sequences that reach new heights.  Finally, the Kevin Feige machine serves Tom Holland a hundred percent correctly.  There is not one weak moment in this new picture.  If anything, it serves as a reminder of what the recent Supergirl neglected in its construction. 

The story jumps to around four years after the complicated events that overflowed with experimental multi-dimensional fun in the last picture, No Way Home.  That movie opted to surrender to fan service with every favorite Christmas ornament on the tree.  Brand New Day delivers an assortment of new characters to progress a solid storyline of curveball surprises.  Thankfully, the narrative stands on its own with a grounded sense of maturity.  Tom Holland is no longer portraying Peter Parker as a klutzy dweeb whose silly carelessness leads to mountains of unamusing mishaps.

A sinister new kind of villain is terrorizing Peter/Spidey in a post age where no one has any recollection of Peter Parker, including his love interest MJ and his best friend Ned (Zendaya, Jacob Batalon). As well, his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) has now passed on while he’s left only with daily visits to her grave to offer solace.  Peter’s isolation as a super-hero crime fighter in New York is now that much more troubling as he cannot fathom how to approach this new antagonist who has a novel way of hiding within the populace of the city while staying right on Peter’s tail with disturbing torment. 

As well, returning writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers weave in a very popular storyline from the classic silver age comics as poor Spidey seems to lose concentration of his powers and thus some frightening inconveniences occur.  To aid the web head with these new challenges is the acerbic anti-hero Frank Castle aka The Punisher (Jon Bernthal, graduating from the Netflix/Disney + Marvel streaming series) and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) who seems to have a proper stronghold on his Mr. Hyde, green goliath persona. For now!!!! There’s also the superhero clean-up crew known as the Department Of Damage Control, led by actor Tramell Tillman (from the inventive Apple + series Severance, which I strongly recommend).  A phone call away is a likable police lieutenant (Liza Colón-Zayas) and the new Black Widow aka Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) has an unsuspecting “office” nearby.

Everything looks improved in Brand New Day.  The Hulk is bigger, fiercer and angrier.  He’s much more well defined in his action scenes.  Frank Castle is not a hi & bye character.  He blends into the storyline of the film, with just enough backstory to care about his relationship to Spider-Man, unlike the fruitless contribution of Lobo in Supergirl.  All other characters are served valuable purpose to the transitions of the screenplay. 

Spider-Man actually occupies most of the film with the mask on.  Finally!!!!  What frustrated me tremendously about the first two Holland films was that the hero was hardly shown wearing the familiar threads of bright blue and red with the web stitching.  When I am watching a Spider-Man movie, I want to see Spider-Man.  At last, McKenna, Somers and new director to the franchise, Destin Daniel Cretton get it right.  The mask stays on.  The costume stays on.  Webs are shooting out all over the city and their various designs are wildly imaginative found in the best comic book issues. 

The choreography of the action sequences is superb frame for frame with punches, kicks, acrobatics and deflections.  Web swinging goes to new heights and across wide diameters.  Everything looks like a perfect design.

The second half of Brand New Day opens up some wonderful twists that lead the film down new paths.  What I’m grateful for is that this time Peter Parker works to solve all the dilemmas on his own.  He doesn’t turn to guys like Iron Man, Dr. Strange or Happy Hogan.  There is a wealth of Marvel favorites here, but this picture truly belongs to the title character Spider-Man following a promising formula used with Chris Evans in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Cretton wisely closes the film with a feel-good salute to Spidey’s hometown of New York City.  No special visuals or dazzling sci fi or animation.  Just sites of the most popular city in the world.  After a whirlwind experience of a breezy two and a half hours, this was the most suitable way to close out this outstanding chapter.  No needle drops of pop music.  Rather, sensitive instrumentals and bright visuals that lend to positive outlooks for the world we all share together.  Movies are not just for escape. Movies also have the magic to make us feel good about ourselves.

Tom Holland has wonderful chemistry with the whole cast.  I believe the scenes he shares with Zendaya are the couple’s best to date.  On rooftops high above the city and later in a confined room, the two actors have focused emotions accompanied with dialogue that never feels hammy or something built for daytime soap opera.  Just great acting from both leads who embrace how serious millions of fans are about the best in comic book film adaptations.  No one in this cast is cashing in a paycheck here.  They are looking to do great work that will stand the test of time when this movie is popped in the blu ray player ten or twenty years from now.

As the third act of this film began, I told myself this is easily in the top five best films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and without question the best Spider-Man film to date.  Anyone who frowns on comic book movies (Martin Scorcese, Terry Gilliam) need to become more open minded.  The best ones look for internal conflicts, remorse, love, hate, insecurity, trauma, grief, happiness, duty and responsibility.  Spider-Man: Brand New Day covers all of these bases.

One of the year’s best films.

SUPERGIRL

By Marc S. Sanders

I don’t understand it.  A billion-dollar movie studio like Warner Brothers, with DC Studios, has all of the resources imaginable and nearly ninety years of source material to draw from and they opt for absolute dreck populated with three literal vomit scenes.  In the first twenty seconds of the movie, the hero’s dog urinates on the floor!  This is Supergirl, and this is the best they came up with?

Milly Alcock is a fine actress. She’s got an unusual tomboy appearance (that is unfairly and cruelly being ridiculed online) and she’s ready to offer gusto and nerve. Unfortunately, with her first big marquee picture, she is wrongly lent a disservice with a terrible script written by Ana Nogueira (The Vampire Diaries).  The story is simple and that’s not a complaint.  Basically, a villain called Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts), who looks like a foreground extra from a Mad Max picture, gets his spot in the limelight when he slaughters the family of a young girl named Ruthye (Eve Ridley) and poisons the super terrier dog Krypto.  Kara Zor-El (aka Supergirl) has 72 hours to find Krem and recover the antidote or the lovable mutt will die.  Plus, she has to discourage Ruthye from slaying Krem out of a means of revenge.  While they are at it, Kara might as well try to break up a trafficking ring of young girls held in captivity. The pair hop from one seedy bar to another in their quest and encounter the ugliest alien beings imaginable.  These are all Star Wars rejects of the worst looking kind.  None of these characters would even make good action figures.

Spliced within this main plot line, Kara recalls her origin on Kryton, followed by her arrival on Earth where she meets Kal-El, aka Clark Kent/Superman (David Corenswet), for the first time. These flashbacks are the best parts of the picture. Kara struggles with staying by her dying family or leaving them to survive and prosper as a hero.  The demise of Krypton is covered again but then there are residual moments that pertain specifically to Kara that were not extensively covered in other films.

Otherwise, this gal is a miserable drunk, wanting to celebrate her twenty-third birthday by herself, because that’s entertaining and healthy. When she’s not drunk, she’s just hungover.  How is any of this fun or appealing?  Moreover, this is Supergirl. So, I want to see her dressed as Supergirl.  The imagery sells these comic book characters, right.  It’s about pictured aesthetics first.  Kara allows her oversized trench coat to drape sloppily over her hair and untucked Blondie t-shirt.  Bubble size sunglasses hide her red eye. It’s like the costumer and creators are trying as hard as they can to make her as repulsive as possible. Are we meant to enjoy this? Supergirl is not John Belushi in Animal House. He made drunkenness an art form.

Kara’s Kryptonian mother gets sick.  So, she throws up.  Kara gets poisoned.  So, she throws up.  Kara pees with the door opened.  She munches on alien poop and then realizes it tastes like shit.  Duh!  Ruthye spits on Krem. Krypto pees on a Superman newspaper article.  Every bodily fluid imaginable is presented to disgust your pallet, and if it is done for bathroom humor it’s not funny and if it is done for dramatic heights, it really was never, ever necessary.

Jason Momoa is back as Aquaman…I’m sorry Lobo, who’s basically Aquaman now, but caked in black vampire makeup and equipped with a cigar and a motorcycle.  He’s a b-character from the DC comics. An anti-hero that I think enthusiasts celebrate like they do with Deadpool.  The guy looks like a KISS rocker from outer space.  Though I don’t know what he contributes to this movie with the exception of finally bringing the ever so famous Lobo to life.  The guy never turns the tides on the narrative.  He has nothing funny to say like Deadpool might.  His motorcycle doesn’t perform any outstanding stunts.  His cigar lights up without a match, and he sits in a prison cell.  That’s it! He’s muscle but with no expressive superpowers. He observes, rather than participates. So, what’s he doing here?

After all of the Superman iterations and spinoffs, why does James Gunn, who is blessed with creative control of the entire DC franchise, stay away from the wide gallery of rogue villains offered over the last century of comic books. There’s Braniac (who I’ve read will finally arrive in the next Superman film), Metallo, and Mr. Mytxlplyk.  The Toyman too. Heck, Jerry Seinfeld introduced the backwards/opposite functioning Bizzaro Superman in his sitcom about nothing.  These are all drawn from the weird cloth that I’d think Gunn would encourage since his success with Guardians Of The Galaxy.  Instead, we are dealt an unappealing, truly ugly and uncool, one-dimensional adversary with spikes in his face, dressed in leather.  I read that Krem is a featured bad guy in recent comic iteration of Supergirl. I don’t care. This storyline adaptation is a terrible option to follow. The day after seeing this movie, I can’t even recall what accent this guy Krem uses.  He’s positively forgettable and I think as unimaginable an invention as that nuclear dude from Superman IV: The Quest For Peace.  

Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) has not assembled a good film.  I saw it on IMAX, and the enhancement did his picture no favors. Supergirl punches and kicks more than she flies.  She shoots the lasers out of her eyes and uses the x-ray vision, but where’s the super breath?  Where’s the super speed? The super hearing? Couldn’t we see her fly more?  The fight choreography is clunky and at times hard to decipher through dark CGI moving at too many frames per second.   Gillispie’s team only makes up for that by deliberately concealing Kara kicking ass and focusing on Ruthye shuddering under a table during a barroom brawl.  Not cute.  Not funny.  Just lazy craftsmanship.

There’s no wit to anything said.  Krypto is cute as a misbehaving rascal, but there’s nothing to laugh or cheer for in the rest of the film, and when Supergirl finally defeats Krem, her last act is offensively anticlimactic.  Actually, it’s obscenely hypocritical to the doctrines she tried to instill in Ruthye over the course of the film, and it crudely defies what the Superman/Supergirl mythology has always stood for.  I wanted to throw my popcorn at the screen.

Supergirl is not a total failure thanks to Milly Alcock.  She looks great in the costume and has a heroic appeal in the limited time that’s offered from the script.  Krypto is a precocious troublemaker and the Kryton footage and background look sharp, even if unoriginal. Efforts to make the alien dialogue feel authentic works nicely and enhances the fantasy/sci-fi demands.  Yet, these are just small ingredients in a stew lacking anything savory.  

Since 1984, Kal-El’s cousin has been done criminally wrong now for the third time (don’t forget The Flash from a few years ago) on the big screen. On all occasions it’s clear the filmmakers didn’t even try to research and explore what was easily at their fingertips.  Instead, they just literally vomited, shit, spit and pissed out whatever popped into their heads first – a John Wick storyline with a failed Mad Max villain, drenched in an assortment of bodily fluids.

Fly away from Supergirl. 

OBSESSION

By Marc S. Sanders

Curry Barker is a director that I intend to enthusiastically follow just as I did when Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan were building their astonishing careers. Those guys reshaped the conventions of filmmaking.  Curry Barker has done the same by simplifying the horror genre, hiding his subjects in eerie darkness, holding his shots and relying on very, very good young actors, capable of comedy, drama and absolute unpredictable terror.  He’s done all of this for under a million dollars.

The more often I stick to my guns and not read or watch anything about an upcoming film before seeing it, the likelier it is I walk out immensely satisfied.  With Obsession, I only knew it has become a monster, must-see sleeper hit and it’s a horror movie.  The title implies another Fatal Attraction rehash. Yet, it is something else entirely.  It operates like a short story ghost tale whispered around the campfire and stretches a long, long way.

Barker directs his script that covers a shy and geeky twenty something kid named Bear (Michael Johnston) who lacks the gumption to profess his love for his co-worker Nikki (Inde Navarrette).  He enters an unusual charm shop looking for a token of his affection for her and comes upon a novelty item called a “One Wish Willow.”  Take it out of the box, make a wish, snap it in half.  

Bear still can’t find the words to talk to happy go lucky Nikki, but he uses the opportunity to make his own wish. Instantly, things take effect and Nikki develops an unexpected attraction to Bear that surprises him and their friends.  Yet, the fondness Nikki has seems to enhance with extreme oddity while gradually becoming terribly unhealthy.  Bear loves this instant attention, but he’s got to set some boundaries that he and Nikki should abide.  If only Nikki could understand, but she cannot help but whine about her extreme wants and desires, and when I say whine, I mean WHIIIIIIINE!!!!!!  However, a wish is a wish.

Like most horror movies, a supernatural entity or monster drives the threat.  In slasher schlock, the horny, teenage would-be victims run and cry while Jason or Michael pursue them with a machete.  They can’t be reasoned with because they don’t speak.  They only hack and chop and bloodlet.  Nikki functions on personality disorders that run wild.  You can talk to Nikki, and she’ll smile and nod and lovingly agree, but it may not be enough.  Nor it will not contain other abnormal behaviors.  Bear can try leaving for work in the morning.  The door is right in front of him and Nikki is only wishing he has the best day ever, but what has Nikki done to the door???? Anyway, she’s packed him a delicious lunch.  

The first ten minutes of Obsession are a bit of a chore to get through.  I did not think the characters were carved out well at the start and Barker directs and writes Johnston’s character, Bear, with an excessive amount of stuttering and bashfulness while not allowing much to happen with Nikki.  Yet, once the wish is made every moment of the rest of this film performs with dread, shock and surprising uneasiness.  

Barker finds simple ways to shoot Inde Navarrette in silhouette from the neck up with darkness in the background.  Her eyes will then illuminate through black.  Unusual body language on the far side of the bedroom implies that something is amiss.  Navarrette is a superb character actress who can shape shift facial expressions and maintain concentrated stares as well as Jim Carrey.  Barker holds his camera on Navarrette for long close up takes that make you feel awkward, nervous and scared.  She has an ability to work with her dimpled cheshire cat smiles and EXTREME frowny faces that quietly scream abnormality.  This is an astonishing introduction for a developing new actress capable of doing heavy drama and broad comedy.  I would not be surprised if the Farrelly brothers or Judd Apatow seek her out for their notable raunch/riot fests.  Momentum of awards consideration for her performance is building and rightly so.  Inde Navarrette is as compelling and strong as recent Oscar winner Mikey Maddison in Anora.  Between Emily Blunt (Disclosure Day), Rachel McAdams (Send Help) and Inde Navarrette, actress categories for this year could consist of horror/sci fi contenders, making it hard to single out one from the other.  

Michael Johnston gets better as Barker’s script carries on.  His character is not meant for great accomplishments, and the actor is quite good at showing helplessness with limited intellect and instinct.  I imagine this fresh faced actor is much smarter and wittier than the craft of his character.  At least, Barker’s writing gets stronger with this dweeb after the first few pages of the screenplay.

Obsession works like a disturbed antithesis to an animated Disney movie, and reinvents the deal with the devil motif.  I read that the writer/director recruited his father to write a monologue for possessed Nikki that references the Grimm elements of Hansel & Gretel.  It’s no wonder that story about the children who are lured into an enticing gingerbread house is rarely adapted.  Inde Navarette beautifully captures your fear as Barker allows her all the time in the world to express Nikki’s descriptive, yet nonsensical, mindset.

The suspense in Obsession holds through the entire course of the movie and I was asking simple questions to resolve Bear’s dilemma.  Eventually Curry Barker logically offers satisfying answers.  He abides by the rules of his supernatural fiction and doesn’t cheat the audience with a quick escape plan or a Hail Mary invention to wrap up his hanging threads.  Jump scares consistently serve the story, with one especially pulpy and unforgettable moment that should leave you screaming with horror and laughter.  This new filmmaker has thought everything out with dark and murky photography and a shrilling assembly of sound meant to chaotically startle you.  Again, everything technically found in this picture, made on shoestring budget, effectively builds and enhances the story.  The whole of everyone’s crafts and specialties show beautifully.

I saw Obsession a week ago and have not stopped thinking about it since.  

Try to see this in theaters.  It deserves your attention with a great surround sound system inside the darkest viewing arena you can find.  The more crowded the theater is the better the experience should be.  

Obsession is one of the best pictures of the year.  

DISCLOSURE DAY

By Marc S. Sanders

A day before I saw Steven Spielberg’s latest sci-fi project, Disclosure Day, I witnessed the aftermath celebration of the New York Knicks’ NBA championship win.  People of New York City took to the streets to celebrate.  By and large it appeared jubilant, loud and celebratory.  However, to no surprise, there was a faction of miscreants who used this momentous occasion as an opportunity for property damage and chaos.  School buses and police cars were destroyed and burned while fists and flames happily flailed in the air.  Sixty-Five people were arrested. You can easily find all of the footage online because our present age allows us to witness every action of newsworthiness.  This was a response to a basketball championship, fifty-three years in the making; my whole lifetime thus far.  I’m happy for the Knicks and their fans, though I could care less.  I don’t watch basketball.  Comparing this to the end of Spielberg’s new film, I’m skeptical the real-life response would be as similar and inspiring as the film’s breathtaking, epic conclusion.

Disclosure Day is seeped in government conspiracy and the revelation of extra-terrestrial life discovered on Earth.  Spielberg’s concept was shaped into a screenplay by David Koepp and it hinges on many of the same story beats that Close Encounters Of The Third Kind delivered.  A few different walks of life suddenly find themselves on the run while an antagonistic entity will go to great lengths to censor or eliminate these individuals before reaching their end goal and destination.

Josh O’Connor is who we first meet as a young scientist named Daniel Kellner.  He seems to have arrived from a prior film because he carries a MacGuffin in his backpack after escaping from a clandestine organization headed by a sinister Englishman named Noah Scanlon played by Colin Firth. Noah urges Daniel to handle the item he carries delicately.  The slightest amount of pressure could be dire.

Funnily enough, we first see Daniel under duress as he sits in the stands at a violent, caged match wrestling competition.  This film was released two days before Donald Trump’s absurdly notorious UFC event on the White House lawn.  Assembly in barbarianism.  I dunno.  Just seems too ironic when you witness the ease of this film’s wrap up on an opposing end of the spectrum.  Watch the film and perhaps you’ll understand the sad irony.

Jane is Daniel’s girlfriend, played by Eve Hewson (daughter of U2’s Bono).  She was once studying to be a nun and as she learns more about Daniel’s drive, she questions her faith and the validity of religion, particularly Christianity.  I like this angle the same way I appreciated it in Robert Zemekis’ Contact.  Has God created life elsewhere in this endless environment we call the universe?  Heck, I’ve always wondered why there were never two dinosaurs boarding the ark ahead of the great flood.  Is the bible THE BIBLE?  Cuz if so, where’s the T-Rex?

Elsewhere, a cheerful and manic meteorologist named Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt, who is now a front runner for an Oscar), broadcasting locally out of Kansas City, Missouri, is suddenly exhibiting a variety of strange phenomena following the arrival of a cardinal who lands on her kitchen table.  She can read the minds of people she encounters and can fluently speak any foreign language including Russian, Korean and an indescribable clucking/chirping dialect just before fainting on live television.  From there, all she knows is that she must find a way to hit the road and drive.  Where?  Even she doesn’t know.

An ominous phone call from a man named Hugo (Coleman Domingo, one of my favorite character actors) tries to comfort a terrified Margaret as he insists she make the trip to see him.  Hugo has also filled Daniel in on Margaret’s experience.  Whatever these men know, they now have assurance that what they must share with the world has to happen now.  Margaret is the last remaining piece of the puzzle.  Jane and Margaret’s boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell) are the skeptics.

There’s a lot to recognize in Disclosure Day.  Yet, the mystery of why we are running with these characters and what secrets they carry feels positively fresh and captivating.  When the wrap up arrives, I’m exhilarated and I want to know more, and see as much as possible.  Across the fictional globe of Spielberg and Koepp’s story with an apparent Cold War threat on the horizon, no one standing in front of a cell phone or television can look away and therefore I yearn for a united response as imagined here.  

Chatting with Miguel after the film we both wonder what would truly happen.  Sadly, radicalism would factor and pillaging would abound.  It’s part of human nature to resist one another and push against campaigns.  After all, it happens following presidential elections and sporting victories.  A newly released podcast with Spielberg discussing Stanley Kubrick informs that the eccentric director filmed the first landing on the moon.  Has to be true apparently because 2001: A Space Odyssey was released a whole year before that historic moment.  Right? PEOPLE PLEASE!!!!

Within the confines of this story, the unheard-of revelations display an assembled united response.  Not likely. Nevertheless, I’m not complaining.  For now, this is science-fiction.  Talk to me in a hundred years and perhaps Close Encounters… and Disclosure Day will be prophetic, like Network is for reality TV and modern-day journalism.  The real question, based on the harshness of mankind, will it always be a fantasy? Sadly, I think I know the answer.  Optimism can only go so far.

So, there’s a lot to think about, and Disclosure Day captured me quite emotionally with fear and curiosity.  It’s been a while since I was so deeply interested in the direction a movie was taking me.  I recognized the tropes of Spielberg and all the Twilight Zone stimuli, but I was also wise enough not to read or view much advance press for this movie.    

Beyond the enigmas, this is a superb and thrilling adventure.  Spielberg directs action scenes that feel newly inventive.  You have seen heroes stuck in a car on the tracks with the train bearing down on them.  However, in Steven Spielberg’s hands this feels new and exhilarating.  I was literally slamming my hand on the armrest as this blaring centerpiece prolongs. This scene alone earns accolades in visual effects, stunt work, editing, cinematography, and sound editing.

Another moment shows a random extra zapping out of existence when he picks up a significant prop.  The audience I was seated with gasped with complete shock.  Steven Spielberg always finds a way to incorporate his visuals with the means to advance the story.  He threatens me with props.  He stuns with sight and sound like few directors can offer. He uses another original score from John Williams to build and uphold tension with atmospheric lens flares and bold, dark hues from his resident cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski (Oscar winner for Schindler’s List).

The cast is doing superb work here. My wife, a big fan of The Devil Wears Prada, saw the sequel just three weeks prior and somehow didn’t recognize Emily Blunt in this picture.  It lends to how well the actress hides behind a mid-western American accent with a character buried in startled confusion.  Margaret’s special talents come through seamlessly as she diverts from speaking English to Russian and Korean without dropping a beat.  Blunt interacts with nearly every extra that appears on screen to demonstrate her character’s special talents, and each exchange appears unique from the rest.  She exhibits a wealth of tempos.  Blunt serves as another way the film’s mysteries unravel.  Soon, she might have all the answers to share.

Josh O’Connor is quite good as the running man and shares an effective chemistry of nerves with Eve Hewson.  Colin Firth makes a welcome return as a determined villain.  Initially, he comes off as the man with a drive of no compromise to stop the hero.  His antagonism shows in expressions of pain and great lengths he executes while maintaining a pursuit.  Later, he provides weakness and passion in his quest.  Coleman Domingo is reminiscent of Francois Truffaut from Spielberg’s first alien exploration. He’s the man who knows answers exist. He’s the lynchpin to how everything fits into place.  A man who tells the principal characters to operate on blind faith while he prepares for their arrival.  All of these actors enhance the dialogue of Koepp’s script with intrigue and engaging drama.

Disclosure Day is a wonderful experience of suspense with a passionate hunger for curiosity.  Though it all looks familiar, the film grabbed me on a personal level. It is fondly reminiscent when my twelve-year-old self would happily escape from government agents on my bicycle or find solace in the elements of a popular tune from a Walt Disney picture.  This movie convinced me that whatever answers are out there, they are valuable enough to uncover by even leaving your loved ones behind and trusting a calm, unfamiliar voice or an innocent, indescribable creature to lead you to a salvation.  

Is this fiction?  Not to me.

About the only thing that doesn’t seem real is when people stop what they’re doing to watch and listen together.  Once again, though, Steven Spielberg gives you hope.

FIVE EASY PIECES

By Marc S. Sanders

Some films simply focus on the internal struggle of a character.  There might side component figures, but those are not fully formed because they exist to shape the main character we are directed to observe.  In Taxi Driver, Paul Schrader and Martin Scorsese scrounge up several people from a seedy New York City underbelly to intrude upon the life of isolated and angry Travis Bickle, the Vietnam war veteran.  All walks of life enter his cab and leave it.  Travis sums up the various individuals by his own twisted meter.  Some he’ll follow.  Some he’ll abandon.  Eventually, he’ll even protect someone vulnerable to the salacious world he occupies.  

Bobby Dupea, played with heartbreaking brilliance by Jack Nicholson, the main character of Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces, journeys down a similar path.  However, he’d be apt to abandon everyone.  One problem is he can’t escape from himself.  He could leave his personal jacket behind in a restroom and face a bitter cold, but he’ll never be able to shed his own skin.  

Bobby lives with an airhead hick waitress named Reyette (Karen Black in an Oscar nominated role), but he doesn’t value her.  He cheats and boozes around with the next dingbat woman who approaches him in the local bowling alley (Sally Struthers). Whatever is currently in Bobby’s life is one more chapter that’s left behind as a means to gain further mileage away from where he originates.  It’s hard to comprehend how Bobby, a young man with the potential to be a celebrated concert pianist, could flee from a past and dwell within a mundane life as a worker in a California oil field.  Otherwise, all he’s doing is bowling and drinking at night with his buddy Elton (Billy Green Bush) while never thinking about Reyette. Bobby is a problematic guy, never wanting to challenge complexities in relationships or advance his gifts of talent.  Bobby Dupea is never destined for self-comfort or pleasure.

Carole Eastman’s script, with input from Rafelson, examines what I believe many people are too proud or reluctant to admit.  Try as they might they cannot come to grips with the life handed to them, albeit with extraordinary talent or simplicity.  Reyette is happier to be a greasy spoon waitress with a penchant to sing the songs of Tammy Wynette.  Bobby has so much more potential but he’s that much more unsatisfied than Reyette.  

Often within the film there are visual allegories to Bobby’s struggle.  He nurses a bottle of booze while driving on the freeway with Elton.  Traffic is at a standstill.  No one is going anywhere.  There’s no escape, and about the only action anyone can take in this stationary position is to honk their horns with intolerable impatience.  Bobby can’t even settle for that, however.  He storms out of the driver seat to wail at the other cars.  When he sees an old piano resting on a moving truck, he climbs aboard and starts to play.  Nicholson’s body language doesn’t show a man at peace with the instrument though.  Bobby appears like a crazed madman using the piano as a means to drown out the bellows of the automobiles and he does not even show care when the truck exits the freeway leaving Elton far behind.  Bobby Dupea has no sense of direction.  

Elton has a child with his wife and there’s a moment where he displays his paternal affection.  Elton possesses value for someone.  Bobby, however, is beyond feeling.  Reyette tries to hold on to Bobby and find purpose in a life with him.  She’s uneducated and uncultured in art.  Yet, she’s ready to bowl with Bobby and accompany him in life.  Bobby is only content, never happy, unless he’s frustrated with her.  She gutters the ball down the lane all night and only on the last round does she finally get a strike?  Why should Bobby celebrate?  The strike was for naught.

When Bobby’s sister tells him that their father has suffered a stroke leaving him handicapped and mute, he’s conflicted about making the drive to Washington state to see him.  It’s a return to a life he could never find comfort in despite the musical talent he earned from a lineage of artists.  The people who live there are eccentric and maybe too philosophical. There’s nothing there that Bobby finds enriching.  He certainly doesn’t maintain a relationship with his father.  Yet, he decides to make the drive up the coastline by almost making a clean getaway from Reyette who he reluctantly welcomes to tag along.  Now he’s trapped in a car with someone he feels he has to be with but never wants to be around.  How does he resolve his dilemma? He picks up two women stuck on the side of the rode, only to find one uniquely irritating by harping on the filth of the environment as she attempts an escape to the apparent purity of Alaska.  Bobby knows this woman won’t find her utopian salvation, just as he will never get there either.

Bobby fights against standards.  The well-known diner scene (one of my favorites in all of movies) has him revolting against a server’s adherence to menu policy with a crass comment directed at her followed by a chaotic clearance of the drinking glasses on the table.  This man can’t decide what makes him happy, but he also cannot endure the tolerance of how others live in this world.  Nothing offers salvation for him.

At the Washington home, he comes across a student named Catherine (Susan Anspach) who is married to a dweebish fellow – a violinist with a sprained neck.  Catherine appreciates Bobby’s calm interpretation of playing Chopin, but she knows she cannot go further than that with him.  Bobby can’t confound her reasoning.  The answer for Bobby has always been to leave everything behind.  Why can’t Catherine do the same?

He also can’t find a way to connect with his father.  His sister assures him that dad can hear him, but the bearded expression stays the same and the best that Bobby can do is say he can’t stay in anything he’s at.  The monologue that Jack Nicholson performs to his mute father is such a departure from so many of his other crazed roles peppered within his body of work.  This is a weak man; a man who can deliver an endless number of communicative notes on the piano but cannot find the words to express himself, because he’s at a loss of what to say and uncover what he wants. His devices leave him to either rage or let it be, or maybe it’s best if he leaves.

Bob Rafelson’s choices for this film must be praised.  For a film about a pianist, there’s more selections from the twangy tunes of Tammy Wynette than there are from the piano.  Quite a contrast of Midwest country music against the eloquence of classical pieces that the main character was raised on.  

When Bobby finally sits to play Chopin for Catherine, you never actually see Nicholson play the piano.  Rafelson turns his camera away from Nicholson to pan over the various photographs hanging on the walls of the room. The long ancestry of the Dupea family is shown.  Yet, because there is no passion from Bobby, there is nothing to see. Rafelson never shows Bobby’s hands touching the keys.  When he boards that truck to play while sitting in traffic, Rafelson shoots Nicholson from the car positioned behind the truck.  The camera never boards the truck with Bobby.  I don’t recall ever seeing even a glimpse of eighty-eight keys during the entirety of the film.  The piano haunts Bobby Dupea.  It never compliments him.

Five Easy Pieces arrived after Jack Nicholson’s scene stealing comedy in Easy Rider demonstrated how well the famed actor could carry a picture.  This guy was a dynamo.  He could be loud and brash on the back of a motorcycle, or he could evoke crazed lunacy through outbursts or torturous, quiet solitude.  Nicholson’s performances are magnetic because he uses his fellow actors to enhance his characterizations.  Actors like Karen Black, Billy Green Bush and Susan Anspaugh serve as sounding boards for Bobby’s struggles.  Other than the monologued confession that he delivers to his father, all others aid Nicholson to convey his assortment of frustrations in scene after scene.  

With an astute vision from Bob Rafelson, the director effectively shares how Jack Nicholson’s Bobby Dupea knows nothing is as simple as the five easy pieces beginners use to learn to play the piano.  

Once a master, but always enslaved.

SEND HELP

By Marc S. Sanders

The best way to get back at your boss?  I guess you could hope for the slim possibility of surviving a plane crash with him. Then he has no choice but to surrender to your survival instincts on a desert island off the coast of Thailand.  That might deliver a more effective act of vengeance than bad mouthing him online or deleting a promising report that could advance his Fortune 500 company into greater profitability.

In Sam Raimi’s latest horror/slapstick adventure, it’s a blessing for the mousy computer nerd known as Linda Liddle (great name for Rachel McAdams’ character) that she didn’t end up in a skyscraper with twenty terrorists on Christmas Eve.  She likely would not have been as resourceful as she is within the dense jungles of an island populated by wild boar, bugs, and assorted feastings with conch and berries.  Linda is a huge fan of Survivor.  She even went as far as submitting an audition tape demonstrating her abilities to live off of the outdoor elements. She didn’t get on the show, but her efforts are about to pay off.

Bradley (Dylan O’Brien) is now her boss after inheriting the position from his deceased father.  He’s a chauvinistic and conniving jerk.  He disregards Linda and overlooks her for a deserved promotion following seven years of accomplished desk work under dad’s leadership.  The frat buddy who’s only been with the company for six months, and steals credit for Linda’s hard work, cuts in line.

A business trip aboard a private jet nosedives into the ocean leaving only Linda and Bradley as the washed up survivors.  He has a badly injured leg and no knowledge of working in the outdoors.  On the other hand, Linda quickly builds a fire and shelter while also rummaging for various sources of food and water, including a bloody hunt for wild boar.  

From this point, Sam Raimi has lots of fun with his signature scare jumps and zoom-ins to startle you, prompting screams of laughter like you did when you saw Evil Dead and Drag Me To Hell.  This thriller veers down paths least explored. A premise like this could never occur so conveniently in real life, but I had a blast watching Send Help, particularly because this bonkers script from Damian Shannon and Mark Swift can never, ever be trusted.   With Raimi as director, these guys rely on your expectations that stemmed from a million other pictures like The Blue Lagoon or Castaway.   Though I was surprised not to hear a single reference to Tarzan or Gilligan’s Island.  Standard romance and crazed killer material has hardly ever been served up like it is here. The creators of Send Help manipulate you with fresh and shocking ideas.

Bravo to Rachel McAdams, the marquee actress listed above the title, for braving a tremendous, completely unglamorous role. She is stunning at going against type.  She presents a clumsy, insecure outcast with no fashion sense and an ugly mop of a mess of hair.  She’s even got a hideous looking zit on her cheek.  Mean Girl Regina George would have a field day tormenting poor Linda.  This script gives the actress so much to do.  An incredible monologue at the midway point leans towards the twisty ending, but also allows for an illustrious recollection, on an intense level comparable to Quint’s USS Indianapolis anecdote from Jaws.  McAdams is truly one of the most unsung actresses working today.  Just a skilled performer with a wide berth of range and no two of her characters ever look the same.  In Send Help, she’s offering hard hitting drama and suspense as well as ridiculous comedy.  She goes to limits that Jack Nicholson and Gene Hackman provided during their careers. Rachel McAdams is the second coming of Kathy Bates from Misery. 

Dylan O’Brien is a new actor for me. He’s a perfect cad, with a silver spoon of privilege wedged deep down in his throat.  You hate this bastard he plays right from the start bringing what sounds like a ho hum script to alert life.  Against McAdams, there are echoes of Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in both Romancing The Stone and The War Of The Roses. This new couple go to both extremes of those opposite sides of a romantic face off.

Sam Raimi builds a playground for these pawns to roam around in where they get poisoned, vomited on, attacked, splattered with blood, and put in various stages of peril. He’s almost playing a board game as he uses Linda and Bradley to spell out the rules and boundaries that must be observed while they wait to be rescued. To win will mean they either work together or go against each other.  

Send Help veers in so many different directions that it’s nothing but outlandish fun where you ask what could possibly happen next.  You think you’ve seen this movie a dozen times before, but then it is daring enough to invent its own twists.  With only a cast of two you’re conflicted by who you should root for.  This story is completely expansive in imagination, and daring in execution.

Having recently seen Backrooms, I applauded the idea, but I frowned on a stapled conclusion that settles for the monster chasing the poor victim.  Send Help breaks conventions set up in the first half.  It was such a pleasure to not have everything figured out, where the filmmakers took me on a ride far beyond a merry go round.  The scenario is implausible, but the character instincts and circumstances are marvelously intelligent, compelling and totally surprising.

This might be on my top ten list for 2026.