Ready Player One - Review

Ready Player One

It’s fair to say that Steve Spielberg is a legendary film maker. Financially his films have grossed as a Producer worldwide $7,629,730,418 and as a Director $4,533,066,008 (some of these totals cross populate one another). So when it is announced he is working on a new project, just like Pavlov’s dog reaction to the bell I auto react by buying a ticket and seeing his latest regardless of the subject. Such was the case in the way of a millennial-ish focused subject about video games and virtual reality in “Ready Player One” starring Olivia Cooke who is also in the currently released noir film “Thoroughbreds”  and Tie Sheridan who’s previous works include the “Mud”,  “X-Men: Apocalypse”  and “Last Days in the Desert”.

“Ready Player One” takes place in the year 2045 in Columbus, Ohio with an opening scene where we see an area called the “STACKS”. An endless vista of gutted out Winnebago’s, trailer homes, SUV’s and railway cars all vertically attached to one another like “Jenga Blocks” serving as the primary homes of the future working middle class. More so they are an early visual cue to a future place and time where humanity could be on the precipice of a collapse. And while financial wealth is still highly treasured and fought for by the masses of people living there, the daily pursuits of achieving salvation from religion - material wealth -  possessions is not. Instead their daily salvation is achieved by living and playing in the OASIS. An expansive virtual reality universe created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday (Oscar winner Mark Rylance “Bridge of Spies)). When Halliday dies, he leaves his immense fortune of $500T to the first person to find three keys that lead to a digital Easter egg he has hidden somewhere in the OASIS game, sparking a contest that grips the entire planet. When an unlikely young hero named Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) decides to join the contest, he is hurled into a breakneck, reality-bending treasure hunt through a fantastical universe of mystery, discovery and danger.

REVIEW: “Ready Player One” is part live action, part animation, part emotional nostalgia, part homage to classic movie scenes, part lots of video game speak, part love story, part children’s amusement park ride, part fairy tail and part commentary that humans day to day reality just plain old sucks.

Structurally as a standalone film while it is an abundantly lively effort to watch and be entertained by it never spends any time offering up any deeper or wide moral themes to speak of as many previous Spielberg’s films have been in fused with in the past. And that is OK. Instead it’s more of crammed up complex special effects marvel to just have fun with. A cornucopia of endless exciting imaginative visuals from scene to scene. But while it passes the eye test with exceptionally high passing marks it did have for its written material a slightly incoherent storyline that seemingly at times was in a bit of a desperate struggle to keep steady pace with what we are seeing. Trust me not every scene or every consequential pivotal moment in this film is going make complete and total sense. So at some point if you see this you will probably do  as I did by accepting the films execution for what it was doing and just enjoy the ride………………So as they say,  "When in Rome …”.

This is one of the very rarest of films that will either bore some into a total catatonic state or fill others up with pure exhilarating entertaining joy for its whirl roller coast ride of imagination of color, sounds and adventurous wonderment. But the one thing it objectively will never be with a running time of 2:19 minute is not having enough fascinating stuff for you to see. Spielberg definitely worked his special effects people into bloody keyboard fingers overtime hell making this latest work.

In the end “Ready Player One” does offer up one subtle nuance narrative message about how humanity will view its “ART” in the future. Specifically, whether in the realms of art forms from music, plays, paintings, TV, movies and or video games, will humanity be merely satisfied with just sitting passively back to taking a one way journey of sights and sounds entering our ears and eyes senses or will the continuous evolution of humanity’s insatiable desire to learn more, to do more, to experience more evolve through a need for participatory interaction between minds, machines and the expression of art itself. 

Will the basic necessities of having a meaningful life demand we be a part in the creative process of the “Art” we consume and be entertained by?  Do we in the future routinely and casually enter some virtual reality world to interact with the likes of a futuristic Leonardo DaVinci or a Bruce Springsteen helping them create and craft their version of the next “Mona Lisa” with more or less of a gazing faint smile to appeal to our unique sense of beauty? Do we help a future “Boss” write a new “Born to Run” song with more violins than guitars just to please our musical appeal and allure? It’s something to think about, because it’s coming.

3.00 Stars

Unsane - Review

Unsane

Director Steven Soderbergh who is famous for his cutting edge eclectic story telling with films from “Sex, Lies and Video Tape”, “Oceans 11” to “The Girlfriend Experience” (both a film and TV show now) now takes his vision towards a psychological path and turn with his latest project in the film called “Unsane”. A story shot entirely on an I-phone, Soderbergh develops a story largely around just one fearless character named Sawyer Valentini played by actress Claire Foy who is currently on the acclaimed show “The Crown” playing Queen Elizabeth II.

At the onset we see Sawyer who has just relocated from Boston to Pennsylvania to escape from the man who's been stalking her for the last two years. While consulting with a therapist about her concerns, Valentini unwittingly signs in for a voluntary 24-hour commitment to the Highland Creek Behavioral Center. Her stay at the facility soon gets extended when doctors and nurses begin to question her sanity. Sawyer now believes that one of the staffers is her stalker and she'll do whatever it takes to stay alive and fight her way out.

REVIEW: “Unsane” early on had some very compelling moments that were both thrilling and creepy while evoking a genuine sense of the "who done it" experience with some smart execution.The viewing audience from the very beginning is thrust into actually questioning whether Sawyer is insane or not? Or is she just imagining she is insane? Or are the people working at the hospital insane? Or is this story just a dream about being trapped in a hospital of insane people? And with a running time of 1:47 minutes it is around the 1 hour mark that we have a definitive answer to those many questions. But what transpires next, specifically in the remaining 47 minutes is an exercise of clever manipulative directing on Soderbergh’s part by conjuring up some universal fears such as issues involving claustrophobia, paranoia, being out of control, being distress, being assaulted in your sleep and having other people control your fate without you ever having any say. Does it work? Well mostly yes and sometimes no?

On the “yes” part I liked “Unsane” mostly because it pushed the envelope in a dramtically smart and imaginative way of an old story that we have seen many times before in film and real life about women simply not being believed. This film's story is an especially relevant through the real life prism of the current "Me Too Movement" in those well documented instances where women when compelled to speaking out to relay their feelings and concerns about some male threat in their lives, having others in authority universally dismiss those concerns as the woman being “overly emotional”. And even when the woman has demonstrative proof to verify otherwise, they are still dismssed as "not being a big deal" in the larger scheme of things.. And while in “Unsane” Sawyer experienced these very same problems, what was refreshing about her story‘s track was she never let herself become a victim to the events happening around her by just sitting idly by waiting for that masculine figure to rescue her in the nick of time. Sawyer in "Unsane" was ferocious and let everyone know she was ferocious to the very end.

On the “no” part, “Unsane’ did spiral downward briefly here and there with some predictable cliche scenes that were meant to be clever twists and turns in the plot. They were not that clever, especially if you can see them coming with a screenplay that gave up the game of the situation of why she was being forcible kept in “commitment”.  On a couple occasions the writing just gave away too much up far too early.

"Unsane" is deliciously weird, deliciously creepy and deliciously gritty with directorial craftsmanship that still had me glued to a bulk of the film's story with intrigue throughout.  And in spite of some minor flaws that took some of the guessing away from what Sawyers’ eventual fate would be I still found “Unsane” to be insanely good.

3.50 Stars

Love, Simon - Review

Love, Simon

Rising star actor Nick Robinson along with Jennifer Garner and Josh Duhamel lead a large ensemble cast of twenty something’s playing high school teenagers in the coming of age and the coming out story of a student named Simon Spier (Robinson) in the lightly romantic comedy - lightly dramatic film directed by Greg Berlanti called “Love, Simon”.

The story revolves around seventeen-year old Simon Spier who is attending high school in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. But his life has become increasingly complicated by the fact that he has come to realize he is gay, but has yet to tell his family or friends. But one day one of his friends Leah, who also doesn’t know about Simon being gay, tells him as a matter of gossip about an online confession of a closeted gay student in social media at their high school, known only as "Blue". Simon seeing this as opportunity to finally share his feelings with someone without divulging to everyone what he is going through proceeds to reach out to “Blue” anonymously under his own alias, "Jacques".

But Simon’s secret is discovered by a naïve school jerk named Martin who proceeds to blackmailing Simon into helping him hook up with a girl named Abby who Simon is good friends with. Martin wants to go out on a date with her in the hopes of Abby eventually being his girlfriend and threatens Simon if he doesn’t help him with Abby he will reveal his secret on line to everyone. But as one could expect, the more Simon tries to keep his secret by helping Martin the more of a mess he makes of his life with his friends, his family and “Blue”.   

REVIEW: “Love, Simon” is less of an imaginative film and more of a text book basic story of what has probably happened in real life to almost every teenager and their respective families; the awkwardness, the peril, the dread and the fear people feel when coming out gay. But where this film works well is in the area of highlighting the real emotional ups and downs both through humor and drama while never sacrificing one over the other in key moments when some real emotional depth is call upon.   

Ultimately “Love, Simon” under a cinematic microscope is a light hearted film that is reflective of a changing culture in its attitudes about homosexuality, especially from the perspective of a growing younger audience and population who are simply and naturally more comfortable with their friends being gay, as well as sharing aspects about their relationships in social media.

From a much broad cinematic perspective and as far as romantic film stories go “Love, Simon never gets too weighty in dealing with this subject. It also a few times lathered on the sentimental schmaltz a little too thick for my sake. But in the end both of these are only minor flaws to the story as I still found the film to be very charming to watch.

“Love, Simon’s” story stays in the lane of the important principle of being honest with one another and to yourself with winsomeness, charm, compassion and decency. And when you add to this story an excellent young ensemble cast, a quality script and a genuine mystery to tantalize the audience with, the film is very well-crafted as a refreshing cultural adolescent moment on the subject of acceptance regardless of race, gender and sexual orientation.  

3.50 Stars

Thoroughbreds - Review

Thoroughbreds

Anya Taylor-Joy (formerly of “Split”) and Olivia Cooke (formerly of “Me, Earl and the Dying Girl”) play childhood friends Lily (Taylor) and Amanda (Cooke) who reconnect in suburban WASPY Connecticut after years of growing apart. Lily has turned into a polished, upper-class teenager, with a fancy boarding school on her transcript and a coveted internship on her resume. Amanda is still in her middle working class neighborhood who has now developed a sharp wit with her own set of particular and peculiar attitudes as well becoming a social outcast in circles at school.

Though they initially seem completely different from the adolescent days, the pair begin to bond through Lily's contempt for her oppressive and oddly weird stepfather Mark. As the two young ladies get reacquainted and their friendship grows, they begin to bring out one another's most destructive tendencies. Together they start to share the same ambitions that lead them to hire a local hustler named “Tim” (the late Anton Yelchin formerly of Star Trek Reboot aka Chekov) to take matters into their own hands to set their lives straight.

REVIEW: An equal party psychological thriller and satirically wink – wink humorous look at the human nature of two modern millennials devising something that is both brilliantly devious and brilliantly absurd that you don’t know as the viewer if you should be laughing at the events on the screen or squirming. I did both.

With a screenplay that is nasty, sarcastic, witty and depraved the film at its core is about a pair of ice cold deceptive teenage sociopaths set in a dark noir setting that makes fun of itself while being just enough horrifying to keep you from ever guessing how this low budget film will end.

Stylistically, “Thoroughbreds” is not for everyone, but it has real value for the adventurous film goer like me who wants to be challenged with something fresh and imaginative even if the principle characters in the film come across as two highbrow psycho bat sh*t crazy babes.

3.25 Stars

The Death of Stalin - Review

The Death of Stalin

“The Death of Stalin” is a 2017 political satire comedy film directed and co-written by Armando Iannucci. It stars Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Paddy Considine, Rupert Friend, Jason Isaacs, Michael Palin, Andrea Riseborough and Jeffrey Tambor.

Its plot is centrally true which takes place in 1953 Moscow when the murderous tyrannical dictator Joseph Stalin suddenly drops dead. His parasitic propped up crony friends square off in a frantic power struggle to be the next Soviet leader. Among the contenders are the dweeby Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor), the wily Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi), and the sadistic secret police Chief Lavrentiy Beria (Simon Russell Beale). But as they bumble, brawl, and backstab their way to the top, just who is running the government? Combining palace intrigue with rapid-fire farce, this film is a bitingly odd and funny examination of bureaucratic dysfunction in a highly centralize government as the case then with the communist Soviet Union.

REVIEW:  “The Death of Stalin” for all of its effort to be humorous in the manner of a “Monty Python” film, I found it more of an insightful examination of the human nature to secure power through greed, deception, conceit and vindictiveness, even while the circumstance of it all were somewhat  hilarious and ridiculous to even contemplate.

It is less a film of real historical figures and more of an ensemble cast of odd ball characters in the purest sense of the word as we watch them seriously conspire and calculating plot their path to power all the while do it with a slapstick silliness against one another to be the new Secretary of the Soviet empire. You chuckle at their lunacy and yet you never forget that these men were the cause of deaths of untold innocent Soviet citizens.

If you like irony, satire and slapstick through the black comedy mocking prism of a bunch of historical middle age politburos power obsessed communist bureaucratic despots who cannot distinguish consequentially the difference of not having enough cream in their coffee to shooting someone in the head for some slight misstep then “The Death of Stalin” is your kind of film.

3.25 Stars

  

Red Sparrow - Review

Red Sparrow

Academy Award Winner Jennifer Lawrence, Australian actor, director and writer Joel Edgerton (“Warrior” and “Loving”) and Oscar winner Jeremy Irons star in Director Frank Lawrence’s contemporary spy thriller called “Red Sparrow”.

At the start we see Prima ballerina Dominika Egorova (Lawrence) a rising star in her national dance troop who during a performance suffers an injury that ends her dancing career leaving her with a bleak and uncertain future. And it’s during the months after her recovery from surgery her uncle Ivan Egorov (Matthias Schoenaerts) who works for the state secret police informs her that she won’t have much longer to live in the state subsidized apartment nor receive the premium medical care her mother receives for her chronic illness. He does however offer her an opportunity to keeping her benefits a while longer if she does a favor for him regarding getting some information from a wealthy Russian oligarch the state is suspicious about. Knowing it will probably mean having sex with him she reluctantly agrees.

But something else dramatically happens leaving her unnerved and betrayed by her uncle. Still her uncle saw great potential in her helping him with the clandestine assignment and suggest to her to consider starting a new career working for the state secret police by going to the “Sparrow School”, a super-secret intelligence service that trains exceptional young men and people to use their minds and bodies as weapons.

Through trial and error Egorova starts to emerge as one of the more dangerous Sparrows after completing the sadistic training process. She is soon sent to the field to spy and gain critical information on an American CIA spy named Nathan Nash (Joel Edgerton) who escaped the clutches of the Russian police to Budapest who they suspected was working with a senior treasonous mole inside Russian intelligence.

REVIEW: Running 2:20 minutes the look and action of the first 40 minutes was brilliant, filled with real spy master intrigue, dramatic tension and atmospherics all draped in the red colored gorgeous exteriors some common to Russian decor and culture. But it is shortly after Lawrence character goes to Sparrow School that the film starts to get bogged down structurally with its skirting the boundaries between what is sex with endless scenes of sadistic, bloody, violent behavior including overt pornographic role playing to showcase how much one must be willing to endure as harden strip down trainees completely devoid of any human emotions to becoming the ultimate weapon of human sexuality.

After the story moves from the class room to spying for real in the field it gets laden with a lot of scenes of Lawrence’s “Dominika Egorova” spending a lot of time just walking about in streets and buildings, staring suspiciously at random people, looking up, around and underneath and simply moving from room to room making the story a bit hard to follow.  I guess structurally this was a visual method by the director of subconciously offering to the theater screen viewers the plausible question ......... “What is she up to?” Actually that is the core plot to the film “What is she up to”.  Is she a Russian agent or a possible double agent or a triple agent or a quadruple agent? The film works overly hard to be unpredictable at every turn, but in the end it’s not that unpredictable at all. You figure her and them all out way too soon.

Now there were some light moments in the story including some amusing dialogue uttered by Russian superior’s constant characterization of Americans which are very much topical and currently saturated in our daily news coverage. I also got a chuckle about actor Matthias Schoenaerts who played the uncle who conveniently but definitely by no coincidence looked an awful lot like a younger Vladimir Putin, including his Cheshire cat smile. (PLOT HINT).

Ultimately I still found “Red Sparrow” a reasonable entertaining experience with Lawrence's showing a lot of courage, smarts, grace and humanity in her character. She comes across genuinely both strong and yet vulnerable as someone you find is decent and kind. But the film’s plot while briskly executed, sensational and lavish to look at, with some moments of intense intrigue, was still way too easy an espionage thriller to figure out. You can see the conclusion coming a mile away. 

For me a movie, any movie, even a spy movie, even a spy movie when it’s about a real life global adversary is still supposed keep you legitimately guessing and also having something or someone be the heroic symbol as part of its finale, even if their persona is both murderous and dark ( i.e. Michael Corleone). But in “Red Sparrow” none of its characters came across as a fundamental hero per se. Instead they were overly tightly honed fictional characters who were in a perpetual state of suspiciousness. Suspicious of people, places and things, whether they were friends or foes. Suspicious villainous people who all collectively were very good at lying to one another all the while never having or displaying any moral redeeming qualities to ever grasp to root for.

Krasnyy Vorobey, bezuslovno stoit posmotret', no, veroyatno tol'ko togda kogda on dostupen dlya arendy. Proshchay.

3.00 Stars