The BFG
Dir. Steven Spielberg
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Steven Spielberg used to be synonymous with spectacle-based summer blockbusters (E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park), but as of late he's taken less inspiration from the fantastical and more from the History Channel, with movies that have "father's day gift" written all over them, like Lincoln, War Horse, and last year's Bridge of Spies. But The BFG, based on Roald Dahl's children's book about a Big Friendly Giant, harks back to that time of awe-struck children and dream-like visuals (in this case literally) that made Spielberg a household name. Unfortunately, despite The BFG's dazzling special effects, the Spielbergian aspects that weren't translated here was any sense of tension or conflict, a brisk pace, and perhaps most egregiously, a child actor who wasn't annoying as hell.
The BFG takes place in London during the 1980s (I wish it was a timeless "fairy tale" no-place, but specific and out-of-place cultural references were made 2/3rds into the film for no real reason). We follow a young orphan named Sophie (Ruby Barnhill), who's unable to sleep, and while walking around during a bout of insomnia at 3am, witnesses a big f'ing giant (a motion-captured Mark Rylance) lurking outside in a hooded robe. Then, in a brilliantly "Spielberg" sequence, the giant catches Sophie snooping, reaches inside the orphanage, and plucks her right out of bed, carrying her off to a land known as "Giant Country." The way the giant's hand reaches through the orphanage window, with the night's blue light shining behind it, had an eerie quality reminiscent of Close Encounters, and how he runs through the city, disguising himself as a lamppost and a pine tree to evade detection was fantastic, especially as the seemingly weightless camera movements captured everything from Sophie's point of view (feeling very similar to Spielberg's underrated motion-capture film The Adventures of Tintin).
These sorts of "perspective" sequences are what captures the magic of Spielberg's childlike wonder and are the best aspects of The BFG, but the story itself was in dire need of conflict. Soon after Sophie is brought back to the BFG's lair, she goes from completely terrified to surrogate daughter to the BFG as quickly as you can say "whizzpopper." She immediately takes to his charming inability to use a correct vocabulary (he repeatedly refers to human beings as "human beans"), and much of this works due to Mark Rylance's performance. Having recently earned an Oscar for Bridge of Spies, Rylance makes this mumbling, barely coherent goof-off into a fully-fleshed out character whose every nuanced facial expression is captured digitally. On the other hand, 11-year old Ruby Barnhill falls into the camp of shrill, inauthentic child actors that plagues many otherwise great films (the western Shane is probably the pinnacle of annoying child actors practically ruining everything around them). Her attempts at humor don't come across well at all, and the crux of the film, the relationship between a girl and her giant, never rang true for me. I don't know much about how the film was made, but I'd bet upwards of $20 that Rylance and Barnhill didn't record their scenes at the same time (I'd bet higher, but I'm a cheap bastard). They both seem to be acting in a vacuum, and Sophie sticks out like a sore thumb among the giants.
The pacing of the film is also surprisingly languid for a movie made in today's age of ADHD-ridden, "bouncy house" children who need to be corralled. Scenes seem to drag on and on until they've totally lost their magic. One visually impressive scene, involving the BFG and Sophie literally "catching dreams" like they're fireflies, was beautifully rendered, but had absolutely no conflict to contend with and went on for at least 10 minutes. Even jokes which have decent punchlines (there's a great little gag involving British royalty farting) are built up for so long that they lose their impact. Any unmedicated kids in the theater are likely going to get antsy and cause a ruckus (even I was squirming in my seat).
The only conflict that arises in the film comes when a group of even bigger, not-so-friendly giants wants to cook and eat little Sophie, but there's never any real danger at stake, and when the going gets tough, a deus ex machina comes from nowhere to solve everything. Instead of Sophie and the BFG, two mismatched loners who need to learn to stick up for themselves, taking on the big bad guys using their own wits, they literally get in contact with the British government and have helicopters fly in to take the baddies away. So in my mind, the film sets up this perfectly wholesome tale about facing your fears, but completely mishandles its own message in the third act of the film. So without a decent story to cling to, what you're left with is to marvel at the state-of-the-art (though inevitably soon to be outdated) special effects, which are indeed well realized. But, if you're looking for a single emotion outside of "wonder," like thrills or laughs or outright fear, you'd better stick to Spielberg's back catalogue.
Rating: B-
The Shallows
Dir. Jaume Collet-Serra
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Once Jaws was released in the summer of 1975, "killer shark movies" became its own genre, inspiring countless imitations like Joe Dante's Piranha, that played on audience's fear of the water. More than 40 years later, after many sequels, ripoffs, homages, theme park rides, video games, and all the merchandising one can find in the deep blue sea, shark movies have really lost their luster (its ludicrous culmination being the Sharknado series). The Shallows, from director Jaume Collet-Serra, whose House of Wax remake is surprisingly good and underrated, throws away the "bigger is better" concept that all those rip-offs got wrong and scales his shark attack film back, to great results.
Blake Lively stars as surfer-girl Nancy, who in memoriam to her mother drives to a hidden away beach in Mexico where her mommy surfed while she was pregnant - the catch is it's so remote Nancy needs a guide to get her there and it's so isolated no one even seems to know the name of it (my biggest gripe with the film is that we never learn the name of the beach - a missed opportunity would be having the camera pan over to a knocked-down sign reading "Shark's Cove"). You can imagine what happens next: Blake Lively may not be "lively" much longer, if you catch my drift. She soon becomes stranded on a small rock island miles from the shore, with a great white shark chomping at the bit to chomp at her bits. With her only companion a broken-winged seagull, and with no means of help, Nancy must figure out something quick, before the high tide comes rushing back in, covering her rocky safe zone.
Surprisingly, The Shallows is a tense, fun b-movie perfect for summer. Jaume Collet-Serra finds interesting, clever new ways for Nancy to problem-solve and "MacGyver" her way to safety, and I actually found myself invested in her character and whether or not she'd get out (normally I'd root for the shark in this situation). Her backstory is deftly handled at the beginning of the film with a brief, natural FaceTime conversation with her family (so later decisions make more sense), and the knowledge of when the tide rises and falls adds a time-pressure element to the situation. It may not be without its silly moments (she names the seagull "Steven"), Nancy may explain expositional things out loud that you'd never say in reality, and, sure, Lively's bikini-clad ass probably deserves its own screen credit for the amount of time the camera spends lingering on it, but The Shallows is still an effective little thriller that reminds you, especially during this summer season of giant blockbusters, that bigger isn't necessarily better.
Rating: B
Free State of Jones
Dir. Gary Ross
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With the sure-to-be-Oscar-nominated Birth of Nation recently getting buzz from Sundance, and in general seeing a rise in black perspectives finally becoming prominent in the film world (Marvel's Black Panther has a 90% black cast), the "white savior" story in Free State of Jones probably couldn't have been released at a worse time. The story follows Mississippi farmer Newton "Newt" Knight (Matthew McConaughey), serving as a medic for the Confederate army. Once his nephew dies in battle, Newt, who opposes fighting in the "rich man's" war and the concept of slavery, flees back home and is labelled a deserter. Knight finds refuge with a group of runaway slaves in a swamp, and building up an underground community of farmers and slaves, leads a rebellion towards freedom.
While I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with this story, and Knight definitely sounds like an unsung American hero worthy of a big screen treatment, in today's social climate, it would've been refreshing (and more appropriate) to have a story from the perspective of those actually being oppressed. We've seen so many Civil War-era films lately with a white renegade hero saving colored people (Lincoln, 12 Years a Slave with Brad Pitt, Django Unchained with King Schultz), and Free State of Jones continues the trend instead of trying something different. None of these films taken on their own merits is a bad thing, but the trend of powerless blacks saved by a white dude is definitely present, and perhaps if the storytelling and characterizations in Free State of Jones was stronger, it'd stand out less.
Aside from being a bit regressive from a social standpoint, what really makes Free State of Jones unbearable is that it's simply boring as hell. Doing homework for a history class on the same subject would be less tedious than sitting through this film. The movie feels like what should have been a 7-part HBO miniseries chopped up to the point that Knight feels like a completely "generic," interchangeable stock hero. Huge portions of history are summed up through obtrusive on-screen texts, and the post-war years are speeded through so quickly it feels like a Grindhouse film with "missing reels." Randomly, in the middle of the film, we're abruptly taken 85 years later in a courthouse battle regarding the lawfulness of what could be a "mixed" marriage; it feels like Gary Ross is trying to hit home the point that all this racism is part of a never-ending wheel through time, but because he didn't have time to establish a stronger parallel between the two periods, it feels unnecessarily shoehorned in. The same goes for a supposed romance between McConaughey and a freed slave, which has no drama whatsoever.
As far as I'm concerned, McConaughey is one of the best, most charismatic actors working today (I'm really looking forward to what he does in the Dark Tower movie), but Free State of Jones doesn't give him much of an opportunity to do much else than stolidly trudge through a textbook "history lesson."
PS. As if it wasn't hard enough to slog through this movie, the entire time I was watching this there were 4-5 flies constantly drifting in, on, and around the projector, casting little blurry roving shadows the entire time. The manager came out once, lackadaisically and unsuccessfully swatted a few times, and left.
Rating: C-
The Neon Demon
Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn
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Nicolas Winding Refn is a stylist, and depending who you ask, without much substance. Movies like Drive and Only God Forgives undoubtedly look and sound great, but often feel cold, detached, and as though Refn hadn't thought about any ideas beyond if the shot looked cool or not. While I can see how detractors of The Neon Demon could say the same thing, I found there was just enough interesting things happening underneath the strobe-lit surface of this pseudo-horror "art" flick that I was strangely mesmerized the whole time.
Unlike the ultra-masculine heroes of Refn's past work (Bronson, Drive), The Neon Demon follows 16-year old Jesse (Elle Fanning), hoping to make it as a model on her own in Los Angeles. The industry immediately responds to her youthful beauty, and as Fanning delves deeper into this eerie, Lynchian rabbit hole of catty models, creepy photographers, and catwalks that look like the inside of Scarlett Johansson's spaceship in Under the Skin, Jesse slowly develops from a "pure as snow" innocent fairy tale princess (not unlike Fanning's stint as Sleeping Beauty in Maleficent) to the titular "Neon Demon." Fanning's performance is great, and the film is a beautiful, off-kilter, if somewhat messy story about the curse of beauty and essentially what would happen if Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf were the same person.
The striking visuals of the film are absolutely spellbinding and deserve to be seen in a dark theater. This is by far the best-looking movie I've seen this year, and feels very much like if David Lynch directed a 70's Italian giallo horror film. Cliff Martinez hits the score out of the park as well, creating an electronic dreamscape that pairs well with the neon-lit visuals. The Neon Demon's potentially pretentious abstractness may seem like Refn continuing a self-indulgent streak, but for whatever reason this movie was like visual crack for my eyes, and the underlying creepiness of the modeling industry seems like perfect material for a film that feels like a nightmare captured on screen.
Rating: B
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