Tag: Aaron Taylor-Johnson

Movie Review – ‘TENET’ – “Does your head hurt yet?”

Written and Directed by Christopher Nolan
Cast: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Kenneth Branagh, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Clémence Poésy, Fiona Dourif, Himesh Patel, Dimple Kapadia, Martin Donovan, Michael Caine
Soundtrack: Ludwig Göransson

Let me start with the elephant in the room.

No, not coronavirus. The sound mix.

No doubt, part of my experience may have been due to some venue-specific subwoofer issues, but I’ve seen other complaints about not being able to make out the dialogue, so this appears to be something of a baked-in problem. Even going in armed with this information, and prepared to listen well, it was still a major struggle. I’m guessing TENET didn’t get much audience testing, because, frankly, much of it is as bad or even worse than Bane’s original mix in The Dark Knight Rises. Perhaps it’s not as pronounced of an issue in a regular theater with an unenhanced speaker system (if I see the movie again, it’ll probably be in a smaller venue), but who knows? I wouldn’t mind some subtitles, to be honest.

Thankfully though, Christopher Nolan has enough silent film sensibility that, even without getting a large chunk of the dialogue, I still never felt utterly lost; though I can’t say I have a complete understanding of the film. However, I’d say I have a better handle on TENET after one viewing than I did on Dunkirk after the first time, though I don’t think it’s quite as good.

Before we even get there though, from the jump, people have been comparing TENET to James Bond, but having now seen the movie, I find this argument specious, if not downright lazy. For one thing, most Nolan movies are influenced by Bond, no matter the subject matter, but second, I think Nolan very specifically didn’t want this to be a Bond film (if anything, I’d say the action in this movie is far more Bourne-influenced, just, you know, not awful). In fact, there’s one specific film, that’s not even really a spy movie, that I would compare TENET to (“[title redacted] on steroids” you might say), but to name it outright would be too much of a spoiler (hint: a major player in that movie is related to a major player in TENET).

But enough criticism. Let’s get to the good stuff.

As we’ve some to expect, if nothing else, I appreciate Nolan’s effort to capturing things in the camera lens as much as humanly possible. Someone else could have made this movie, no doubt for a lot cheaper, and filled in scenes with CGI rather than real extras and practical effects, but it just would not have looked the same. We’ve become so accustomed to computer generated sets and people that simply seeing dozens of actual humans on screen, in a real location, is visually striking (not unlike Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood).

And speaking of humans, there are actually multiple performances worth mentioning here. For one, John David Washington. If he didn’t already win you over in BlacKKKlansman, he’s officially putting you on notice now that he is a S-T-A-R. I seriously could not get enough of him. Also, Robert Pattinson, as I’ve come to expect, turns in another compelling performance (and I’m guessing he got to have even more fun than usual, not having to deal with the extra layer of an American accent [not that he isn’t great at those]). And, finally, Kenneth Branagh gives the movie some real weight; I mean, I loved him for his five-or-so minutes in Dunkirk, but this is the best acting work I’ve seen from him in years.

Overall, I guess I have paradoxical thoughts on TENET, which is somewhat appropriate. On the one hand, it doesn’t feel like the most original Nolan movie, because it’s kind of a spiritual sequel to Inception the way The Fury is to Carrie for Brian De Palma; and yet, there are elements of it that still feel, if not groundbreaking, at least new for Nolan.

It’s a lot, it’ll overwhelm many, but, despite the runtime, I was never bored, and that pays off many debts.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Twofer Movie Review: ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ and ‘Godzilla’ (2014) – Why So Boring?

I never anticipated that I’d be formally reviewing these two movies, as I’m trying to stick to ground less traveled here, but I had the…experience…of seeing both this past week, and they coaxed almost the exact same reaction out of me: disappointment.

X-Men: Days of Future Past and the new Godzilla are the latest members of a growing and increasingly wearisome club of “big” summer movies whose trailers make them look fantastic, but the movies themselves leave much to be desired (perhaps the most notable example of this from 2013 is Man of Steel, though at least the first half is worth watching).  I understand movies are a business, but at this point I’m just tired of all the lies.

So, here I am, reviewing these films that many, many people have seen already, but I want to warn others while they’re still at risk of wasting their time and money.

 

Directed by Bryan Singer
Written by Simon Kinberg (Screenplay and Story), Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn (Story)
Cast: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Nicholas Hoult, Ellen Page, Peter Dinklage, Shawn Ashmore, Omar Sy, Evan Peters, Josh Helman, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Lucas Till, Daniel Cudmore, Booboo Stewart, Michael Lerner
Soundtrack: John Ottman

I had such high hopes…

Before I get too ahead of myself here, I will point out two scenes in this movie that are quite well done, without spoiling too much (not that it really matters):
1. An action scene that takes place in a famous government building where our heroes have to break someone out.  It is the best scene in the film (though not worth the price of admission), and makes great use of Quicksilver (Marvel’s version of The Flash, if you don’t know).
2. A more poignant scene where the two Xaviers (past and future) are talking to one another.  It’s the only scene that really connects on an emotional level to any significant degree.

That’s about it.  Two scenes.

The basic premise of this movie (we need to fix the past in order to save the future) is interesting enough to keep you going for the lengthy running time; I was never so bored that I just wanted to go to sleep, but there’s a substantial gap between being passively interested and actively invested, and this movie consistently fails to fill it.  If I was so inclined, I could complain about lots of things like plot holes, anachronisms, and various other X-Men problems that I know nothing about, but even before all of that, this movie constantly fails to be compelling.  I was expecting Days of Future Past to be big and emotional; it is neither of those.

Whatever needs to happen to advance the story happens in short order, leaving very little room for dramatic tension.  We need to find the professor?  We find the professor.  We need to find Eric?  We find Eric.  We need them to reconcile?  They reconcile in two minutes (even though “they’ve never been further apart”).  And so on and so forth.  Not only that, but they couldn’t seem to figure out an interesting way of delivering mass exposition, which leads to more tedium as a viewer.

Now, again, I know very little about X-Men, and I’ve certainly never read the Days of Future Past storyline in the comics, so I can’t tell you how good of an adaptation the movie is, but, you know what?  I know very little about Captain America and S.H.I.E.L.D., and I really enjoyed The Winter Soldier.  I know very little about Iron Man, and all three of those movies are fantastic (Iron Man 2 is actually my favorite of the trilogy).  All four of the movies I just mentioned work as movies first and worry about the other comic book stuff later, therefore I recommend all of them, but I cannot recommend this new X-Men film (outside of a Netflix/Redbox sort of viewing if you’re that curious).  X-Men: First Class had its problems, and I did not recommend seeing it in a theater when it came out, but there are at least some compelling storylines and interesting cinematic goings-on to get you moderately invested; it’s not a total flop.  I can’t say the same for Days of Future Past.  Ordinarily I’d offer up some sort of suggestion on how to improve the film, but I honestly don’t know about this one outside of having a completely different creative team leading the charge.

Frankly, and this will sound harsh, I think Bryan Singer himself might be the biggest problem here.  Now, he did write and direct the first two X-Men films, and they’re solid, I guess (it’s been a while since I’ve watched them), but on the whole I think his career path is much closer to M. Night Shyamalan than his hero, Richard Donner.  I suppose based on his original X-Men work he was able to wrangle a lot of creative control for Superman Returns, and that movie suffers many of the same problems as Days of Future Past.  Granted, I really enjoyed it when I first saw it in theaters, but I was a younger man, and highly nostalgic for Superman I and II; watching it again though, that movie’s a mess (Lex Luthor wants real estate again, really?), and a good chunk of the running time simply isn’t compelling.  I can understand the studio’s desire to return to the guy that put X-Men on the cinematic map, but, at this point, it seems that Bryan Singer is damaged goods, at least for superhero movies.

★★☆☆☆

 

Directed by Gareth Edwards
Written by Max Borenstein (Screenplay), Dave Callaham (Story)
Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Bryan Cranston, Juliette Binoche, CJ Adams, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Richard T. Jones, Victor Rasuk, Jared Keeso
Soundtrack: Alexandre Desplat

The most common comment (and I uttered it myself many a time) I heard in anticipation of Godzilla was, “Bryan Cranston’s in it,” and that is a true statement; Bryan Cranston is in the new Godzilla, and he’s really good in it when he’s in it, but he’s not in it nearly enough to save it.

This movie started off with a lot of promise.  In the first 15 minutes or so, we see that Bryan Cranston plays an engineer at a nuclear power plant in Japan who’s concerned about a repeating pattern of seismic tremors (whose origins we as the audience already know something about) that might cause his plant some trouble.  Sure enough, he’s right, and the plant suffers a terrible accident as a result of a mysterious earthquake, and, of course, this comes at a great personal cost to our beloved engineer.

BOOM.  That’s a great intro, and a great way to get your audience invested into your movie.  BUT, they then proceed to almost immediately scrap that for a shift in perspective to a different character.  Bryan Cranston’s engineer comes back for a little bit, and you find out what he’s been doing for the past 15 years and it leads to the next plot point, but after that he’s done.  See ya never.

This is my first big problem with this film.  They get you emotionally invested, but then throw it away and give you characters that you just don’t care about; you can’t care about them, at least not in the same way.  The engineer’s character’s arc coulda/shoulda/woulda made up the whole movie, or at least the first half of it.  But jettisoning it so quickly into the run time (no matter who was playing him, really) was a huge mistake in the writing; and replacing him with such boring other characters compounds the problem further.  Let him hang around a lot longer, and you’ve instantly got a better movie; hands down.

My second big issue is creature design; not so much for Godzilla, he looks alright, I guess, but the other creatures (this is not a spoiler; they’re in the trailer if you look close).  They just look so generic, like they got focus-grouped to death or something.  I don’t know, they just don’t look interesting or very creative.  This is where maybe a little more liaising with Toho would have reaped huge benefits.  I mean I know this is a ‘murican Godzilla movie, and I appreciate that they moved the story along more so than a standard reboot, but when your film features giant monsters, those monsters need to be engaging, and they almost completely failed in that respect.

My third and final problematic issue with Godzilla is too much tease and not enough payoff.  Say what you want about Pacific Rim (I’m not that high on it myself, but it’s okay), but you can’t deny that they went all out when it came to showing you the monsters.  Now I’m not saying Godzilla has to be that explicit, but the title of the movie is GODZILLA.  A Godzilla movie should have the payoff of seeing Godzilla doing Godzilla things, and he does, eventually, but even when it’s an all-out brawl, they still cut away and tease you in the midst of it.  It doesn’t come as a fully-satisfying payoff; it’s just more frustration at the end of an already frustrating movie.

What’s also frustrating is that they gave this movie to a promising young director, Gareth Edwards (not to be confused with Gareth Evans, who’s making the fantastic Raid series), whose first feature was also a monster movie called Monsters that appears to be much more worthwhile than Godzilla.

Now, is Godzilla a better movie than X-Men: Days of Future Past?  Yes.  It at least gives you an initial emotional connection, and though you’re largely waiting for something to happen, it does draw you back in a couple of times with legitimate suspense (something X-Men particularly fails to do); not to mention the visuals are much better on the whole.  But it’s not good enough to warrant a better rating, unfortunately.

★★☆☆☆