Annihilation: Film Review

Alex Garland continues to be one to the more interesting directors out there.  The fact that he seems to focus on the sci-fi genre makes it all the better for me.  While only his third directing position after Dredd, and Ex Machina, his screenplays for 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Never Let Me Go, and The Beach were also worthy mentions to his resume.

Annihilation is likely the most difficult of these to get through.  At points quiet and deliberately paced, it won't find interest among Snapchat aficionados.  This was recognized by Paramount and producer David Ellison who both wanted to change significant portions of the film in order to market it better to gain more commercial success.  Luckily Garland got his way and the film remained unaltered.  This has doomed the film to financial losses however as it appears to be headed for replacement in theaters in short order.  In fact, in markets other than the US, the film is headed straight for Netflix.

So what are most modern viewers missing?  A creepy, bloody, sometimes violent two hours of relatively unexplained weirdness.  Diverging heavily from the Jeff VanderMeer's trilogy, the film contains a complete beginning, middle and end and leaves nothing hanging for sequels.  In fact, beyond just a very basic scaffolding, the film contains little plot or events that are recognizable to the reader.  Ignore any mention of white-washing in the film...I've read the novels and attributing Asian or any other racial identities to the characters is virtually nonexistent and the fact that Garland used Portman as the lead shouldn't bother anyone except the SJW class of dimwits.

In the end our own film experiences are often derived from the histories we bring with ourselves to the theater.  For me, it boils down to a parable about a couple's attempt at recovery from infidelity seen through the prism of a sci-fi quest to discern the reasons behind an alien "shimmer" that spreads from a single point and mutates all it touches.  What comes out the other side are a husband and a wife completely different, down to their very genetic material than what they were before--the film seeming to say that through the prism of infidelity, all that you thought, were and did in the past is to meet a state of tabula rasa in order to function on the other side.

Along the way people are turned to plants, men are cut open and seen to contain giant worms on their insides, albino alligator-shark hybrids hunt the all female scientific team, a bear-something creature howls in a human voice before tearing apart one team member who has gone insane, and a near mirror finish alien-humanoid performs a mimicry dance in imitating Portman's every gesture.

I have a few quibbles...Like if the military was sending in a team to explore this anomaly, could they possibly have equipped this team worse?  No helmets?  No body armor?  And their overall gear looks more like they are out for a girl scout camping trip than a serious expedition.  Additionally...there isn't a single one of the female characters who looks comfortable with a gun...they all look like their skin might be allergic to the feel of metal on their skin and are stiff in their mannerisms in holding the weapons...someone needs some better training to at least LOOK like they know what they are doing...

I enjoyed it far better than the books from which the film came from as it does contain a resolution of its original questions and Garland's artistic voice is stronger and clearer than VanderMeer's who created an thrilling but ultimately empty world.  It took Garland to fill it with a reason to be.

Stranger Things Season 2 Episode 7 -- A Giant Dumpster Fire

So its been a LOOOONG time since I've written anything here...and I guess its kind of sad that this drove me to it...but...it did.

I like the Netflix series Stranger Things a lot.  I was an early watcher of Season 1 and just finished watching season two.  It has enough cultural references that are relevant to me that it feels like a part of my youth.  Its also smart enough to make it interesting without being pretentious, keeping its humor and awareness that it is an entertainment product.

Up until episode 7 of Season 2 the show had also kept away from making the mistakes that shows like Lost and The Walking Dead fell quickly into which is the wasting of time and action in plot elements that don't advance the overall story or that don't specifically speak to the development of its characters.

That ended here.

This should go down as THE textbook definition of a "throwaway episode".  The primary character of the entire series completes a full circle--leaving her "home" town of Hawkins, visiting the big city, meeting her lost sister (who we were only previously introduced to in a 2 minute sequence at the very beginning of Season 2), committing a few crimes, realizing she isn't as morally bankrupt as this sister, and then returning to Hawkins.

Not only does the entire episode feel out of place--sorry but the city, punks, petty crime, and even colors, tones, clothing, hair styles, etc. all are antithetical to the Stranger Things story.  Stranger Things is at its core, a return to a simpler time...one which we look back on fondly and with rose colored glasses with the "Upside Down" and evil government providing the dark side balance to the story...Here in this episode?  Its all on the dark side with Eleven even sporting black eyeliner, dyed hair and clothes and the story feels out of whack and completely out of sorts.  She doesn't belong here and neither does the story or the viewer.  You can almost hear the writers and creators saying to themselves "Oooo...you know what would be cool?  If we could pull Eleven out of her small town environment and place her in an urban area and create that sort of juxtaposition with city dwelling cliches of that time period vs. the rural ones we seen her with to date!  How can we do that?!?!"

Its the old "You spent so much time thinking about if you COULD that you didn't bother to consider if you SHOULD..."

How do you really know that the episode is a throwaway?  Because if you just happened to skip over it from 6 to 8 you wouldn't blink an eye or think that you've missed a thing...and the characters have not learned, developed, changed in any way.  The plot and its development is completely independent of this episode.  I just wish I could forget it and its events as much as the characters seem to have...

Film Review: Chef

Streaming Netflix is both a blessing and a curse.  On one hand it makes it easy to watch an endless amount of media.  On the other because of its limited menu (covering only a limited number of top flight films vs. the mail version of Netflix) you end up scouring the internet for "Best .... on Netflix".  Best horror films, best scifi, just "best films", best "new" films, and on and on and on in an attempt to try and find something worth watching...

So when something like Chef ends up on a number of "best of new films on streaming Netflix" you end up trying it.

While Chef isn't a bad film, it doesn't live up to its billing and certainly not its casting.  Here you have Jon Favreau, Dustin Hoffman, Sofia Vergara, John Leguizamo, Scarlett Johansson and Robert Downey Jr.  With a cast like that you would expect a great film with great performances.  Not so.  What you get is a film that will likely show up on TNT or TBS or the like and be run several hundreds of times due to its positive and completely inoffensive nature.  Seriously, this is like a movie you show to kids in fifth grade to put them to sleep on days when you have a substitute teacher.

Its not completely boring--I could watch Sofia Vergara dust a single mantlepiece for two hours and find it entertaining but, the film tries so hard to be positive and carry a "things will be a all right if you just try hard enough and are a good person" that it is sickenly saccharine.  Take that and the fact that the film ties itself in to so many current "trends" like food trucks, cooking being a metaphor for life, etc. that it plays like a hipster's mishmash of ideas--something Favreau who wrote, directed and starred in this film, should be too old for.

A completely forgettable film, if you're on an airplane feel free to take it in.  It won't offend your neighbor and it might put you both to sleep.

NISMOStuff TV Review: Black Mirror

I think this may be only my second TV review that I've done on my site out of the near 1500 posts I've put up on here.

Black Mirror is and was broadcast in the UK but has made its way over here to the States on Netflix.  The series is only two seasons long and each season is only three episodes long.  I am only through the first "season" but I have no problem recommending it as highly as anything I've seen on TV, perhaps ever.  The show is completely episodic in nature with each one a wholly contained world and story that is wrapped up within that single edition.  Each episode is fully formed and rich in detail and characters feeling like each one lasts much longer than its less than an hour length and much more like a feature film than a TV show.  Every show changes its cast, storyline, world, characters, etc.  There is nothing connecting one to another besides the artists behind the camera and the quality in front of it.

In fact this is where I would quibble with other critics of the show.  Others have compared it to things like The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents or similar while I find it much grander in its scale.  I find it more comparable to something like a Fincher or Ridley Scott film with a healthy dose of social satire thrown in.  The show focuses neatly on the intersection of near term technological developments (media, internet, consumerism, entertainment, Artificial Intelligence, etc.) and how they change our place in such a rapidly changing world.  How our modern world impacts our romantic relationships, our governments, media, etc. are all covered here and in ways that will make you laugh and cringe (say the forcing of the UK's Prime Minister to have sex with a pig on live TV/Internet?) in ways I didn't think possible.

The satire, dark humor, insigh,t and skewering of ourselves is at a level I've rarely seen or felt.  Watching a future of ours that is only seconds ahead of where we stand today, unfold and twist our conceptions of what is right and wrong, good and bad is some of the most perverse fun I've had with TV in a long time.  This isn't necessarily "light" fair...I'm as much for some gratuitous violence and nudity as the next guy and blowing away endless hordes of zombies is always a good time but this won't fit in those parameters...it requires a bit more thought, attention and emotional investment but in terms of intellectual and emotional rewards, I have seen little like it.  If you have Netflix or the ability to watch this series, I could not recommend it more highly.