The Martian (8/10): Let's talk science!

“I don't want to come off as arrogant here, but I'm the greatest botanist on this planet.”

Ridley Scott’s latest film, The Martian, is an intelligently crafted science fiction drama that takes on the form of a problem-solving movie in a very nerdy way. It is not an easy movie to sell considering it is very talkative and there is a lot of science involved, but Drew Goddard’s adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel is quite captivating. There is no denying that the true star of the film is Matt Damon who basically manages to put on a one-man show in Mars and deliver a very entertaining performance in a similar way to what Tom Hanks did in Castaway. Although this film does give much more screen time to the characters back home as they try to communicate and find a way to bring their astronaut back, but it is Damon who really stands out. The film has been nominated for the Golden Globes for best comedy and although I don’t agree with that designation it is Damon who delivers the comedy through his charismatic performance as he faces each new struggle in quite a light and positive way. The movie is a drama more than anything else and it carefully studies every scenario of what could go wrong in Mars and presents interesting solutions to those problems. Ultimately that is what makes this film stand out from other space films which Ridley himself has directed. This is a different kind of movie, a survival film with brains that respects its audience and doesn’t try to include any fantastical elements for entertainment purposes (not that I have a problem with it since I was a huge fan of Prometheus, but this is a completely different genre).

Matt Damon gets all the credit for his charismatic performance as Mark Watney, the astronaut who is abandoned in Mars after a storm breaks out and his crew is forced to leave him behind, but the supporting cast is quite impressive as well. Jessica Chastain is Melissa Lewis, the astronaut in charge of the mission who has to make the fatal decision. The rest of the crew members are Beth Johanssen (Kate Mara), Rick Martinez (Michael Peña), Chis Beck (Sebastian Stan), and Alex Vogel (Aksel Hennie). They don’t get much screen time, but they are each given their moment and it is enough to know what motivates their decisions. I would’ve enjoyed to spend more time with these characters considering the cast is wonderful, but Matt Damon doesn’t even give us time to miss them. The focus is on his character and he delivers every line to perfection. We are instantly drawn to his character and we identify with his struggle to survive. Back home at NASA headquarters we are also introduced to several characters who are doing the best they can to bring Mark home. Jeff Daniels is Teddy Sanders, the man responsible for any decision taken as the NASA director, Kristen Wiig is Annie Montrose, the director of Media Relations who is trying to save face in the midst of the situation, Sean Bean is Mitch Henderson, the flight director who is in contact with Watney’s crew as they are returning home, and Chiwetel Ejiofor is Vincent Kapoor, the mission director. It’s surprising how Ridley Scott manages to include all these characters in the film and give them a unique personality as they all join forces to come up with the best solution. Daniels plays a very similar character to who he plays in The Newsroom, but if you only know him from Dumb and Dumber than you are in for a treat.   

When I first heard about this movie I was a bit worried about the effects that recent space films like Interstellar (which also starred Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain), Prometheus (which was directed by Ridley Scott), or Gravity might have on The Martian considering the space theme. To my surprise, the film stands out from the very opening scene as it takes a totally different approach and focuses more on Mark’s survival skills and his wit. He is a very charismatic character who easily pulls you in to his conflict and allows you to participate in the problem-solution process. This isn’t about special effects, it is about intelligent people getting together to come up with a solution.

Fantastic Four (4/10): There is nothing fantastic about this.

"With every new discovery, there is risk, there is sacrifice... and there are consequences."

I was surprised that critics and audiences were ripping this film apart because in my mind there was no way the producers could go wrong with this young and talented cast, so I was prepared to enjoy and defend this movie. I had heard about the production problems, but something similar had happened with Ant-Man and that movie turned out to be surprisingly fun. At least the director, Josh Trank, had decided to stay on board for this film despite reports of disputes with his producers. His first feature film, Chronicle, was a very entertaining and unique low budget found-footage sci-fi movie, so I thought that with a bigger budget he could deliver an even better film. Evidently I was wrong because Fantastic Four is a gigantic mess. There were several concerns over the film being rushed so that Fox wouldn't lose the rights to the franchise and the movie definitely felt that way. I don’t know how much blame could be put on Trank, because it seems that the producers took control over the film, so before you discard him as a terrible director I’d recommend you to check out Chronicle. See that film instead of this comic adaptation reboot. I’d even go as far as saying that the 2005 version was better.  

Fantastic Four is basically an origin story that ends up being so long that by the time the villain shows up it feels more like a cameo than anything else. The final climax of the film is one of the worst I've seen in a superhero movie. I wouldn't mind this as much if the origin story would've been interesting, but none of these characters were engaging and the dialogue was quite terrible. Every one of them seemed to have daddy issues or some sort of cliche that characters in this genre usually have. Even Toby Kebbell who played Victor Domashev in this movie shared all the basic stereotypical traits foreshadowing who he would later become, Dr. Doom. Superhero films always tend to follow the same basic formula, but the successful ones manage to stand out for some unique quality, either benefitting from a great central performance, its funny upbeat light tone, or its spectacular action scenes. Fantastic Four uses the same formula, but doesn't do anything unique with it. There is no chemistry between the cast and the delivery of some of their lines are overly dramatic at times. There isn’t a single strong performance here, there is no comedy whatsoever, and the action scenes (or should I say scene?) are underwhelming (especially if you compare it to other action Summer films like Mission Impossible and Mad Max). Unfortunately the film is a huge mess because it fails at setting up interesting characters and later rushes the final climatic action scene, completely changing gears on the slow and drawn out pacing that the movie had during its long introduction.

The main character in this film is Reed Richards of course, so we follow him from childhood. He dreams of creating a device that can teleport people into an alternate place. In school he befriends a tough boy named Ben who becomes his assistant. Reed is a genius and working from his garage he comes up with an impressive mechanism in which he manages to teleport some objects, but in the process he leaves the entire town without electricity. Several years pass and now Reed (Miles Teller) and Ben (Jamie Bell) are in a High School science fair showing off their invention. Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) and his daughter Sue (Kate Mara) are impressed with Reed so they offer him an opportunity to work with them in their advanced state of the art laboratory. Victor (Toby Kebbell) had been working on a very similar project, but had unsuccessfully been able to teleport the objects back so the two begin working together to make their dream a reality. Dr. Storm’s other son, Johnny (Michael B. Jordan) also joins the project and when they succeed at teleporting a group of chimps to an alternate universe they decide its time for them to take the trip as well. Of course something goes terribly wrong and they each go through a unique physical transformation. They will have to learn to deal with their new acquired abilities, which the military takes a keen interest in, but Reed is focused on fixing them instead.

Miles Teller had been on a roll with strong performances in films like Whiplash and The Spectacular Now. He was even great in his supporting role in Insurgent, a film I didn’t like. But here he simply didn’t have the charm to tackle this super hero. Perhaps the blame can be put on the screenwriters, but he couldn’t do anything to make Reed an interesting character (not prior to his transformation nor after). Michael B. Jordan’s career seemed to be taking off after his impressive performances in Chronicle and Fruitvale Station, but he wasn’t able to do much with the small role that was given to him here. Reg. E. Cathey was perhaps the weakest link thanks to his overly dramatic delivery of each line with his deeply serious voice. Toby Kebbell came in a close second, but I really do have to blame the screenwriters here for making his character such a cliche. Villains have always been a problem in super hero films and it couldn’t be more true than it is here. I’ve heard a couple defenses claiming that this is more of a sci-fi centering on human transformation (with comparisons to Cronenberg’s The Fly), but that couldn’t be further from the truth because when these heroes acquire their new abilities the film inexplicably leaps forward in time showing these characters already adapted to their transformation and coming to terms with it. All the psychological trauma is ignored in order to prepare for the final climactic action scene which was to put in nicely, underwhelming.       

My Review: Transcendence (5/10)

"We're not gonna fight them. We're gonna transcend them."

Transcendence is one of those rare films where you can't quite grasp what exactly it is that's missing, but somehow it fails to find a connection with most audiences. Wally Pfister seemed to have all the right ingredients for his directing debut. He had a terrific cast including  Johnny Depp, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany, and Kate Mara, and a strong screenplay that Christopher Nolan even considered to use before going on to make Interstellar. We also know that Pfister can handle the visuals because he has been the cinematographer for Nolan in all his films since Memento. The film looks great and has a strong cast, but the characters and the story simply didn't draw me in. For a film that tries to be thought provoking, I found it extremely difficult to stay awake or even care for the premise.  It tries to build suspense and make us consider how dangerous our technological advancements have become, but it succeeds at neither. I don't want to get into spoiler territory either, but I found the final act incoherent as it was completely changing the message it was giving all along. I was really disappointed with this film and found it quite boring. 

He may seem like the main character, but Johnny Depp doesn't get much screen time in this film. He plays Dr. Will Caster, one of the lead researchers and entrepreneurs in the field of Artificial Intelligence. He works alongside his wife, Evelyn (Rebecca Hall), and they are currently trying to create a sentient machine with human emotions (which is referred to in the scientific community as Technological Singularity, but Will likes to call it Transcendence). Paul Bettany is Max Waters, one of Evelyn and Will's best friends and fellow researcher. Their work has received a lot of attention, but not everyone is happy about this. A radical anti-technology organization led by Bree (Kate Mara) will do what it takes to stop them before they continue having success with their experimentation. 

The performances were solid, but the story just felt flat and failed to engage me. I didn't really care for any of the characters either. Most of the actors were underused, and the only noteworthy thing about Transcendence was its visuals. The inconsistencies in some of the characters is what really hurt this film in my opinion, and I think they simply tried to tie things up too neatly at the end by redeeming some of things that had been done earlier on. The film also seems to have some pacing issues as it drags during several scenes and feels way too long. The film lacks thrills and feels unfocused making it hard to follow at times. I usually like smart sci-fi films, but this one felt all over the place and could have used some of that Artificial Intelligence to help with the production of the film so it would be more coherent. It never transcends from the screen to our brains in the way it so desperately tries to. 

My Review: Deadfall (4/10)

"What would home look like? I don't know. A farmhouse in the valley, I guess, like the one we grew up in, Liza and I."

Academy Award winning director for his foreign film The Counterfeiters, Stefan Ruzowitzky, now brings us an American crime thriller dealing with dysfunctional families. It seems to be an odd choice for a director who had so much success back in Austria considering this is an average B-film that doesn't introduce anything new or unique to the genre. Deadfall never manages to deliver the thrills that it promises either and has a rather unsatisfying ending. At times it felt like a film that was trying to be something else, but it never quite figured out what it wanted to be and ended up only scratching the surface of the dysfunctional family drama it was so desperately tying to explore. Perhaps it suffered from trying to add several subplots and intertwine them together towards the climactic end, but ultimately Deadfall felt like your average crime thriller with a strong ensemble cast, but a poor and unimaginative script. Deadfall never quite delivers the thrills and the characters are underdeveloped turning this film into a messy ordeal. As much as I wanted to enjoy this, I couldn't find anything redeeming about it, and not even the beautiful Olivia Wilde shines here. It's a dull film that tries to be more important than it really is with way too many subplots and overlapping themes that are barely explored.

The screenplay was written by Zach Dean centering on two siblings, Addison (Eric Bana) and Liza (Olivia Wilde), who are heading towards the Canadian border after having pulled of a casino heist. We never see the actual heist take place since the film opens with them already in route to the border when all of a sudden in the midst of a blizzard their vehicle crashes into a deer. Addison is forced to kill the patrolman and decides to split up with Liza and meet up later as the police will be after him. On another note, we are introduced to a former boxer named Jay (Charlie Hunnam) who is being released from prison. The first thing Jay does is call his mother June (Sissy Spacek) who lives in a farmhouse near the spot where Addison and Liza crashed. She invites Jay over for Thanksgiving dinner despite the fact that he's been estranged with his father Chet (Kris Kristofferson). Along the way, Jay finds Liza nearly freezing to death near the highway and he decides to give her a lift. Addison on the other hand is being hunted by Sheriff Becker (Treat Williams) and his men who are closing in on the trail of blood he's left behind. Becker's daughter, Hannah (Kate Mara), whose also an officer is ordered to stay in the station and out of trouble. As the characters are all introduced it becomes inevitable to realize that they are all going to intersect somewhere along the way.

Despite the talented ensemble cast, the script is so poorly written that there is not much they can do to prevent their characters from becoming cardboard cutouts. Even the always reliable and legendary actors such as Kris Kristofferson and Sissy Spacek can't do anything to save this film. Hunnam and Wilde have a very poorly developed romantic subplot that felt extremely rushed. Bana didn't really look too menacing as the villain and at times his character felt cartoonish. The dysfunctional family elements that this film tries to explore never really gets anywhere and they all seem too cliche. The male characters are seen as tough while the females are forgiving and patient. The western showdown near the end wasn't engaging either and everything about this film felt ordinary despite the different themes they were trying to blend together. It never digs under the surface of those elements it's trying to introduce and that's why the film feels so dull and empty. Deadfall is not the important and smart thriller it's trying to be.

My Review: 10 Years (7/10)

¨Now the party can start!¨

The film is about a 10 year High School reunion, and I know that the formula seems repeated and overdone but this film felt fresh and original. The cast is great and they all share a good amount of screen time. This film manages to deal with all the separate stories and characters much better than other high budget films tried to (Valentine`s Day and New Year`s Eve). I was interested in the different relationships between these characters and was hooked from the beginning. I thought Channing Tatum would be the lead character and that the story would focus around him, but it actually doesn’t; everyone gets a decent amount of screen time. There is no side story here, all the stories are equally relevant and have sufficient time to find some sort of closure. 10 Years was written and directed by Jamie Linden and this was his first film as a director. He had written the screenplays for Dear John and We Are Marshall. Here he gets to work with Tatum once again, but my favorite performance from this movie came from Oscar Isaac, who I really liked in Drive. Drive was my favorite movie from 2011, and despite the fact that Ryan Gosling carried that movie; I thought Isaac was absolutely perfect in his role as well. The chemistry he shares here with Kate Mara is amazing, and the song he performs at the karaoke bar was one of the highlights of the movie. 10 Years is not a laugh out comedy, but it has it`s funny moments. I felt like it worked best as a sort of melancholic romantic drama. The actors were all perfectly casted in my opinion and they each delivered. 10 Years was a lovely and entertaining film.

As I mentioned before the story revolves around a 10 year High School reunion. The first couple that`s introduced in the story is Jake (Channing Tatum) and Jess (Jenna Dewan-Tatum) who have been dating over three years. Jess is going to accompany Jake to his High School reunion. Before going to the party they stop to meet up with Jake`s High School buddies Cully (Chris Pratt) and Sam (Ari Graynor) who are happily married with two kids. Then they also reunite with Marty (Justin Long) and AJ (Max Minghella), and with Scott (Scott Porter) and Suki (Eiko Nijo) who are visiting from Japan. The last one that meets up with them is Reeves (Oscar Isaac), the most successful person from his class who has become a rock celebrity. Together they arrive at the High school reunion and meet up with the rest of their classmates. Cully, who was the class bully, is trying to redeem himself from his past and is looking to make amends with all the nerds. Jake is surprised when he sees  his ex-High School sweetheart, Mary (Rosario Dawson) arrive with her hubby Paul (Ron Livingston). Apparently Jake and Mary were pretty much a perfect couple during their teenage years. And then there`s Elise (Kate Mara) who always played it low in High School, but who Reeves remembers all too well as the girl who got away. There are several other supporting characters who also contribute to the overall humor and heart of the film like Garrity (Brian Geraghty), the ¨whigger¨ and his wife Olivia (Aubrey Plaza) who had never heard of that side of Garrity.

There is no novelty or breakthrough in this film. The story has been told before and we`ve seen the characters in other movies. In a way 10 Years reminded me of an 80`s John Hughes movie. The film really worked thanks to some great performances from the cast and an emotionally gripping script. I was really hooked with some of the stories and the way in which these characters interacted with each other. Despite the ten years that had gone by, these characters still remained the same deep down inside and some needed closure. I loved Isaac`s character and his song. His story and the chemistry between him and Mara was pretty intense. Aubrey Plaza really didn’t get much screen time, but I saw her as a leading lady in Safety Not Guaranteed and there is no doubt she is really talented. Tatum got to act beside his wife once again after first meeting her on the set of Step Up. There was really a lot of chemistry between so many of these characters and they all seemed like real life friends. This is an interesting directorial debut from Jamie Linden and I hope more people get to see this good movie.

  

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