ourson66 Reviews

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Tour-de-force in every department.

[10/10 · 5 February 2023]

This is what happens when you get extremely creative directors and writers together with super talented actors, and give them a project that allows all of them to make career-defining work. Every single aspect of this film is as close to perfect as I've seen. The images on screen are lush and saturated with color and texture, the camera work is kinetic and puts you right in the middle of all the action, the ensemble cast is fantastic (more below), the stunts are mind-blowing (and hilarious), the story is totally weird and original (and a bit mind-bending, but don't worry it all makes sense in the end), the special effects make you scratch your head and wonder: "how did they do that???"

A quick moment of focus on the acting in "Everything Everywhere...". The role of Evelyn is very difficult as it carries the weight of the entire film, which is told almost entirely from her perspective. She has to go from a tired, end-of-her rope, slightly downtrodden immigrant woman whose hopes have been dashed by harsh reality, to the saviour of not only our universe, but countless others as well, realizing along the way that the little daily events and love of her family, is what will save her. Michelle Yeoh pulls this off masterfully, letting us see in her face (and whole being) the transitions she's undergoing, at great peril to her own sanity. But she in no way does this feat on her own. The talent arrayed around her is so powerful: an almost unrecognizable Jamie Lee Curtis portrays her nemesis IRS agent; Ke Hui Kwan (known from Indiana Jones and The Goonies) in his first major film role in over 20 years portrays Evelyn's husband Waymond, at once both the ass-kicking protagonist and tender beating heart of the family; the radiant Stephanie Hsu plays Joy, Evelyn's daughter and unexpected antagonist. Even the minor parts (James Hong, Tallie Medel,and. Jenny Slate) are fleshed-out and contribute greatly to the film.

The result, is a film that feels holistic, that presses all the buttons. It's by turns hilarious, balls-to-the-wall exciting, devastatingly sad, and ultimately life-affirming and uplifting. One of the best films I've seen in the last 10 years.

Dune (2021)

Villeneuve Wrangles Angry Octopus into Mesh Bag

[8/10 · 18 December 2021]

There is a reason why for many years, Frank Herbert's quintessential science fiction epic: "Dune", was considered unfilmable. Herbert's terse, dense, detailed prose manages to pack eight thousand years of human future-history into the novel, arriving at a future civilization (it's set in the year 10,191), which has a perfectly good explanation for why it is the way it is. Herbert has the luxury of explaining, often in asides, the reasons why, for instance, there appear to be no computers in this future, or why they fight with swords and daggers instead of laser pistols, and why everything is so baroque, covered in gilt ornamentation, so ... Catholic. But cramming all that explanation into a film that is less than 10 hours long, just doesn't feel possible.

Certainly this is proven by the previous attempts. Alejandro Jodorowsky's unfinished attempt never made it past the production artwork stage (but based on that, would have been a psychedelic crazy-quilt affair). David Lynch's "Dune" from 1984 was an admirable failure, spoilt by budgetary constraints, bad special effects and some questionable filmmaking decisions (like those damnable whispered inner-monologue voiceovers), but nonetheless beautiful, with it's gorgeous sets and Jean-Paul Gaultier costumes. If anything, it served as a perfect demonstration of the difficulty of adapting Herbert's novel to the screen. There is so much going on that important characters had to be cut out entirely or glossed over (like poor, poor Linda Hunt, fresh off her Oscar win for The Year of Living Dangerously, who manages to poke her head on screen and utter a single line of dialog: "I am the shadout Mapes, the housekeeper!", before disappearing completely).

By anyone's estimation, Denis Villeneuve had his work cut out for him, helming this latest 2021 "Dune" adaptation. As a director, he has some good science fiction karma, having directed the sequel Blade Runner: 2049, and probably the most intelligent and thought-provoking science fiction film of the last decade, Arrival. He also has a very close personal relationship to the material, as he has stated that he's been dying to direct Dune since he first read it as a teenager. And, boy, does he do some hard work on this film. The attention to detail is evident in every frame, from the garbled Sardaukar voiceover before the film even begins, to the closing credits. There has obviously been a lot of love, blood, sweat and tears poured into this project. It manages with some deft visuals and minimal exposition, to hint at that vast 8000 year backstory. Everything feels freighted with meaning and history, which gives the film a gravitas that is necessary, but makes a lot of assumptions about what the viewer will know coming into the film (moviegoers that have not read the novel will find themselves confused about the Mentats, as there is no explanation about why they exist and what their abilities are, or why the Bene Gesserit are so wound up about Paul being something with the Hebrew name "Kwisatz Haderach"). Villeneuve has also made the job a little easier by making this film a "part 1 of 2" (a fairly ballsy move, given that the sequel wasn't greenlit until after it became apparent that this film was going to be a success). But even with that, there is a sense that the film is bursting at the seams with too many ideas and story elements and that he is struggling to make the most of every spare second of film (hence the "angry octopus in mesh bag" allusion in the title of this review). The pacing, unusually for Villeneuve, who normally likes to let shots linger, is rapid fire and purposeful, and some scenes feel like the actors had more to say. Indeed there is so much happening in the final act, that we lose track of some characters (Do Gurney Halleck and Thufir Hawat survive the Harkonnen attack? Does Piter DeVries die with the other Harkonnens when the Duke uses his tooth to attempt to kill the Baron?). These loose ends, I suspect, will be carried forward to the second half, but it does leave the viewer feeling like there was so much going on, they may have missed something.

These flaws, however, are not unforgivable, given the complexity of the source material. Villeneuve has been lovingly faithful to the novel, without being slavishly so. And in all other respects (the cinematography, the production design, the special effects), Dune so gloriously delivers the goods that a perhaps overly complex story isn't that big of a deal. I would highly recommend you see this on the biggest screen you have access to, and just sit back and let it wash over you. It's spectacular.

Gravity (2013)

Gravity lacks Gravitas

[8/10 · 13 October 2013]

Alfonso Cuarón is a brilliant technical director, known for peppering his films with impossible shots (like Gravity's epic opening 17 minute tracking shot, his camera seemingly floating lazily in space with his characters). Indeed, the technical achievement in Gravity is glorious, the sumptuous visuals and constantly flowing camera-work giving a visceral sense of what it must be like to be orbiting Earth in zero-g. This is particularly true in 3D, so unless you are prone to motion sickness, I would highly recommend trying to see this in 3D, something I don't normally recommend. Cuarón's handling of the film's pacing is similarly excellent. Any reviewers you read that call this film "boring" have obviously been watching too many video games, or were put off by the lack of hyperactive editing (there are a great many very long free-moving shots in the film), because the film's running time is a very short 91 minutes, and the action begins within the first 5, and doesn't let up until almost the very last frame.

Where the film lacks, is in story. It's a difficult story to manage well on film, because there are only two characters whose faces you see on screen at all, so the entire weight of the film falls squarely upon the shoulders of Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, and the believability of their performances. In this regard, the film is in good hands, because regardless of whether or not you like the characters they portray, both actors turn in solid, nuanced, utterly real performances that, especially for Sandra Bullock, are nothing short of jaw-dropping. The real problem with the story in Gravity is that the characters' back-story, some of which is pivotal to the understanding of the film, can only be revealed by the characters themselves (in monologues, essentially), due to the lack of other characters in the film and the disjointed, each-in-their-own-spacesuit nature of their interactions. This leads to some pretty on-the-nose dialogue and exposition, which detracts from an otherwise exhilarating experience.

The only other complaint I have about the film is the score, which swings between silent and overblown far too quickly, and far too often. There are also some fairly significant scientific errors that will annoy the sci-fi crowd, but shouldn't detract from the film for the less scientifically-inclined. Still, this is an intelligent, visually stunning film, a thing of beauty that is very definitely worth a visit to the theatre (especially if you are going to see it in 3D).

Eastern Promises (2007)

Eastern Promises ... and delivers

[9/10 · 15 September 2007]

In a wet and dreary pre-Christmas London, an anonymous, distressed, 14-year old Russian girl staggers into Trafalgar hospital, on the verge of giving birth, hemorrhaging badly and with obvious heroine tracks on her arms. Pediatric nurse Anna (Naomi Watts) tries in vain to save both mother and baby, but in the end, all that remains is the newborn, and a diary written in Russian in the girl's purse, that contains a business card for a Russian restaurant. Haunted by her own previous miscarriage, and determined that the baby girl not be sent to an orphanage, Anna attempts to have the diary translated in order to identify the anonymous girl's family. In so doing, she becomes embroiled in the dark, seething world of crime, drugs, and prostitution of the Russian Mob. It is an enclosed, hot house society, where family loyalty and responsibility and adherence to the "vory v zakone" code of thieves are paramount, and shady characters like the "restauranteur" Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), his son Kirill (Vincent Cassel) and his "driver" Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen) exist on the periphery of the law.

As a long-time fan of Cronenberg's work, it is interesting for me to see his recent films grab the public attention in such a mainstream way. While it is true that both "A History of Violence" and "Eastern Promises" feature less obviously fantastic elements than, say, "The Fly" or "Scanners", Cronenberg's uniquely clinical and undramatic visual and storytelling style remain intact throughout all of his films. Nothing in a David Cronenberg film appears on- screen without a reason. He's sort of the film-making equivalent of Ernest Hemingway: a deceptively simple, unflinching eye; a calm surface that somehow manages to get under your skin and hints at labyrinthine depths beneath. Cronenberg's work always makes you uncomfortable, but here in "Eastern Promises", it is done very subtly, almost subliminally, so you find yourself thinking about it afterward without realizing it.

The acting in Eastern Promises is uniformly excellent. Viggo Mortensen's Nikolai, in particular, displays a still, coiled menace that is chilling and intense, which plays well against Vincent Cassel's portrayal of the feral Kirill, whose confused and tortured attempts to live up to his father's criminal expectations set the plot in motion, and Armin Mueller-Stahl's stunningly nuanced performance as the crime boss Semyon: Satan dressed up as your favorite uncle at Christmastime. As Anna, unwittingly tossed into this den of serpents, Naomi Watts manages to be simultaneously vulnerable and tenacious in a role for which she will doubtless receive too little credit.

Cronenberg's no-nonsense approach to violence is still in evidence here, from the shockingly bloody opening scene, to one remarkably brutal fight sequence that deserves to be written down in the annals of film history, and is so astonishing that it isn't until afterward that you register the fact that Viggo Mortensen did the whole thing completely nude. But, in the end, it is the sinuous undercurrent of hope, the trickle of humanity that manages to somehow exist amongst these desperate characters, that sticks with me in this film. The writing hints at things rather than stating them, the muted "film noir" visual style enhances this, and even the "big plot twist" near the end of the story (that I wouldn't dream of spoiling for you) is handled with the most minimalist of gestures. I swear, sometime soon David Cronenberg is going to discover the meaning of life in a black screen.