In recent years when the Oscar nominations came out, it often seems like there's an animated feature on the list I hadn't heard of. Some come from Asia, but a surprising number arrive from the Irish studio Cartoon Saloon, the makers of "The Secret of Kells," "Song of the Sea" and "The Breadwinner."
Invariably, I catch up with them later and find out they're some of my favorite animated films of the year. Their newest, "Wolfwalkers," easily takes the lead position as the best I've seen in 2020.
It's hard to describe the breathtaking beauty of this movie. It appears to be largely hand-drawn, though these days some kind of computer-generated effects are often involved for backgrounds or special effects. The colors are incredibly vibrant, a veritable symphony of scarlets and oranges and yellows.
It's a very deliberately 2D effect, which is accentuated during a number of sequences when the action changes to an overhead perspective of a location whilst the characters are still at eye-level to us, sort of like a medieval painting of soldiers inside a walled castle or whatnot.
That fits the setting of the city of Kilkenny during the dreariest part of the Dark Ages.
Robyn Goodfellowe (voice of Honor Kneafsey) is a sweet but willful girl of about 10 who dreams of becoming a mighty hunter like her father (Sean Bean, surprisingly emotive). But most girls are tasked with working in the scullery, something Robyn eschews for practicing with her crossbow and sneaking off into the forbidden woods with her pet raven, Merlin.
The Lord Protector (Simon McBurney) wants to raze the forest to make more room for sheepherding and farming, but a stubborn pack of ghostly wolves harries them. Goodfellowe is tasked with killing them, but has been a miserable failure. Meanwhile, the Irish townsfolk are already in a state of agitation about their English overlords, and whisper stories about wolfwalkers who are part human, part wolf.
It turns out these stories are only partly true. Upon venturing in the woods Robyn meets Mebh (Eva Whittaker), a little girl with a fiery canopy of hair who seems completely feral. She tells Robyn that wolfwalkers like her are not werewolves, but their wolf spirit breaks free of their sleeping body and runs free.
I loved the light and sound effects used for the wolfwalker magic -- it's almost like liquid gold waiting to spill out of their skins. Mebh can control the wolves and even heal wounds by howling keenly.
Mebh's mother (Maria Doyle Kennedy), the leader of the pack, has been sitting unawakened for many months now, her wolf spirit apparently lost or worse. Robyne resolves to help them, increasingly putting her at odds with her father and the steely Lord Protector.
Director Tomm Moore helmed the three movies previously mentioned, and brings in Ross Stewart as co-director. The screenplay is by Will Collins based on a story about Moore, Stewart and Jericca Cleland. It has aspects of the fairy tale genre but also has a modernist immediacy with its themes about alienation and accepting those who are different from us.
The music by Bruno Coulais is just lovely with traditional Irish strings and flutes by the folk group Kila. There's also a song, "Running with the Wolves" by Norwegian singer Aurora, that should get serious awards attention.
Same goes for "Wolfwalkers" as a whole, which will appear on the Oscar short list for animated feature, or there's something wrong with the voting system. This is a story of magic and mystery, heart and grace -- human, and otherwise.
I'm a hi-lo man when it comes to horror. I grew up on the stuff, a true devotee devouring gory zombie flicks before I had down-there hairs. This continued into adulthood, but somewhere around 2000 either I changed or the fright flicks did, and horror films haven't held the same appeal for me since.
It's strange because a lot of horror diehards believe we're in the middle of the genre's golden age, with a lot of popular stuff going straight to video or niche streaming services along with a few high-profile theatrical flicks everyone insisted were so good and so scary where I was firmly ensconced in Meh-town.
"Heritage?" "Midsommar?" I didn't even so much as twitch an eyelid.
But "Possessor?" Yeah, this movie creeped me the hell out.
It's written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg, a family name that is like the Cartier of scare flicks. Daddy David specialized in mind-twisty frightful films ("Videodrone," "Scanners") where our conception of reality was as much threatened as the characters' lives. "Possessor" is thoroughly of that bloodline, something that feels like it was hatched out of the mind of sci-fi pessimist Philip K. Dick ("Blade Runner").
Note: the film is being distributed with an "Uncut" suffix as if to suggest there was a previous, tamer version of the film (of which I'm unaware). It's not being released with an MPAA rating but would surely be NC-17 if it were, with hard-to-look-at violence, nudity and porn-adjacent activity.
The high/low concept is that assassins are recruited to invade the minds of an innocent victim through a neural link inserted in their brain and then use them as avatars to kill high-price targets with no risk to themselves. The possessor then has the host kill themselves, at which time they return to their own body and consciousness.
To the rest of the world, it seems like a random murder-suicide rather than an orchestrated hit.
We see one of these to start the story, as dolled-up female entertainers enter a high-roller club, and one of them (Gabrielle Graham) plunges a knife into a lawyer somebody must really hate. And then she does it again, and again, and again, and many more agains. But it turns out the possessor isn't able to pull the trigger on her (borrowed) self, nearly fouling up the job.
This is Tasya Vos, played by Andrea Riseborough, the proverbial best of the best. Outwardly, she seems like an icy blonde but, as we shall see, there are cracks in her facade as a remorseless killer.
Her handler, Girder (Jennifer Jason Leigh), treats Tasya almost like an adopted daughter, and is even grooming her to be her own replacement. Though Girder is a little worried Tasya's personal life is intruding on her work -- really best to snip out those pesky distractions like a husband (Raoul Bhaneja) and son (Gage Graham-Arbuthnot).
Tasya has moved out of her home but clearly the pull to return is strong.
They've got a big job up next: taking out an egomaniac billionaire -- is there any other kind, apart from maybe Warren Buffett? -- named Parse, played with delicious snarl by Sean Bean. The "in" is his wayward son-in-law-to-be, a former drug dealer named Colin (Christopher Abbott) who fell in love with one of his clients, Parse's daughter Ava (Tuppence Middleton).
Colin sort of reminds me of a young Richard Gere -- a low, impenetrable wall of wavy hair, slim almost boyish build, and a beautiful but bland face that needs some time and creases to give it character. He could be on the cover of a magazine and yet you might walk right by him if you saw him on the street.
He also seems to be stronger-willed than anyone thought, and Tasya has to fight for control of the body, both before and after the deed. (Which is horrifyingly grisly, in how it happens and the ultimate outcome.) Girder scrambles to pull her top agent out, knowing that permanent brain damage has already occurred and will worsen the longer she's trapped inside Colin.
The special effect used to portray the possession is both novel and unnerving, as Tasya's face dissolves like melting wax and then is reconstituted into Colin's features. When things go wrong it becomes like a terrifying, half-formed mask they're both forced to wear.
This isn't really a deep character study, and yet we find ourselves closely identifying with both Tasya and her host. We desperately want her to get out of the body she's trapped in and we'd also like it so that somehow Colin doesn't wind up dead or in prison.
That's a nifty trick to pull off for a filmmaker, to have the audience feel empathy for both the murderer and the victim. Thought he lines are a bit hard to draw, as both learn unpleasant things about themselves they'd rather not know.
"Possessor" is the rare modern horror movie that truly gets under your skin and is content to stay there, like happily burrowing worms.
In my book "The Hunt for Red October" is pretty well a perfect movie. Its sequel, "Patriot Games," is not. It's still a taut, worthy political thriller that's interesting for changing lead actors in the middle of what would become a film trilogy.
Strictly speaking, the events in "Patriot Games" precede those of "Red October" in the Jack Ryan timeline, which was actually the first novel by Tom Clancy to feature what would become his signature character. At the time Ryan was a young professor of military history, probably in his late 20s or early 30s, and had not yet gone to work for the CIA.
This was believable for Alec Baldwin, then a svelte 32 and just coming off the success of "Red October" two years earlier. It was much less so for Harrison Ford, a few weeks from turning 50 when the sequel came out.
But Ford was at that time arguably the biggest box office star in the world, having just wrapped up the Indiana Jones series (for a while), earned his second Oscar nomination for "Working Girl" and been cheated out of a third for "Presumed Innocent." The studio chiefs were doubtless happy to swap out the relatively unknown Baldwin for megastar Ford... though "Games" actually earned slightly less than "Red October" in ticket sales.
The 1994 follow-up, "Clear and Present Danger," is generally regarded as the weakest of the trio but actually was the biggest commercial hit.
Various tales have wandered around Hollywood over the years why the switch was made. Officially Baldwin claimed he wanted to return to his first love of Broadway and had already committed to acting in "Streetcar Named Desire." "Red October" director John McTiernan had originally wanted Ford to play Ryan in that film and saw a chance to get him.
More recently Baldwin wrote in a blog post that he was pushed out in favor of an unnamed huge movie star, who was owed a lot of money for a greenlit picture that fell apart. Giving this star "Patriot Games" would square him with the studio, so a bunch of unreasonable demands were placed on Baldwin, including committing to an open-ended shooting schedule that would endanger his Broadway gig, to encourage him to drop out.
Producer Mace Neufeld, who has shepherded all the Jack Ryan movies including the reboots in 2002 (with Ben Affleck) and 2014 (Chris Pine), has said Baldwin had already exited the film before Ford was signed. But McTiernan himself largely confirmed Baldwin's version of events.
McTiernan has had his own problems, including long legal/financial troubles and a stint in prison for hiring a snoop to wiretap a producer with whom he was squabbling. He actually signed on to make "Clear and Present Danger" first, but stepped out when the studio pressed ahead with "Patriot Games," in which the villains are Irish terrorists.
As an Irish-American McTiernan declined to be involved, and seasoned Australian filmmaker Phillip Noyce ("Dead Calm") was brought in, and went on to direct the last film in the trilogy, too.
There doesn't seem to have been much of an attempt to establish continuity between the Jack Ryan character as played by Baldwin and Ford. The latter's is a resolute everyman hero in the Gregory Peck mold, a family man and straight-arrow patriot who is reluctant to get involved in violence and political intrigue, but finds he has a talent for it.
Baldwin's Ryan has a snide edge to him, a more caustic wit and a bit of primping ego. Even though Ford's one of my favorite film actors, I don't mind saying I found Baldwin's take on the character to be sharper.
But that also worked better in "Red October," where Ryan basically acted as our eyes and ears through which the audience engages the real central character, Sean Connery's Marko Ramius. I don't think people would've wanted to watch two more movies watching a guy who's basically a benevolent a-hole.
I was surprised watching "Patriot Games" again recently how streamlined and tight it is. Clancy's books tend to be fat with lots of side plots and supporting characters -- "techno-thrillers," as they came to be known, more noted for cunning postulations about potential real-world events than deep characterizations or lilting prose.
Screenwriters W. Peter Iliff and Donald E. Stewart real scrape the story down to the barest bone. It's a straight revenge tale with Ryan disrupting a kidnapping attempt on Lord Holmes (James Fox) and his family while visiting England, killing the 16-year-old brother of wolf-like terrorist Sean Miller. Miller is sprung from prison by his IRA-offshoot comrades and spends the rest of the movie trying to kill Ryan, his wife, Cathy (the always-luminous Anne Archer), and their young daughter, Sally (Thora Birch).
In the book the targets of the initial attack were actually Prince Charles and Princess Diana, though they were changed to a non-existent cousin of the Queen for the film. He comes across as something of a good-natured nobleman dolt, unaware that it's his chief aide, Geoffrey (Hugh Fraser), who's tipping off the Irish.
Patrick Bergen plays Kevin O'Donnell, Miller's calculating leash-holder, and Polly Walker is Annette, his spy/girlfriend. J. E. Freeman is a cranky figure as Marty Cantor, a senior boss at the CIA who resents the young upstart Ryan. (Fun fact: Freeman was actually four years younger than Ford.)
Alun Armstrong and David Threlfall play Irish law enforcement types who work for the Brits and spend much of the middle of the move chasing after O'Donnell, Miller and their crew. The latter has a terrific death scene after being foiled by the terrorists, his face pressed to the street and gruffly telling them, "Get on with it and be on your way" right before he's slain.
Samuel L. Jackson plays Robby Jackson, Ryan's dependable Navy buddy, and Richard Harris has a small but vibrant part as Paddy O'Neil, a "bagman" for the IRA who tries to weasel a line between O'Donnell's splinter group and playing the reasonable mick for the television cameras.
James Earl Jones reprises his role as Admiral James Greer from "Red October," pretty much the only holdover actor. He and Ryan have an interesting relationship, part father/son, part mentor/student and not a little bit king/annointed heir. As the CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence, Greer reassures without coddling, manipulates without cold-heartedness.
Greer gets the best out of Ryan by helping him find his way instead of pointing it out for him -- a patron who's never patronizing.
Greer knows how to compartmentalize the uglier aspects of his job, like sending special military forces to assassinate the residents of a secret camp in the Libyan desert based on Ryan's educated -- but hardly certain -- guess that this is where Miller is. This scene plays out with sad, scary music as Ryan watches satellite thermal images of bodies falling to the ground, horrified when another man in the room blithely calls out "That's a kill" while slurping his coffee.
"Patriot Games" was also the big breakout role in America for Sean Bean as Miller. He's so lean and rakish, and is completely committed to getting revenge that it blinds him to all other obligations. This part led to playing a Bond villain and Boromir in "The Lord of the Rings," which helped cement his semi-iconic status as someone adept at playing morally ambiguous characters.
Bit of neat trivia: during their final showdown aboard a motorboat through speeding through a storm -- absent from the novel -- Ford accidently struck Bean with the anchor both characters use as a weapon, giving him a permanent scar over his left eye. It required several stitches and they ended up working it into the movie, covering Bean's real wound with blood makeup.
Ford is famous for his chin scar, and it's a bit of Hollywood legend for him to give one of his own to Bean. It actually helped Bean secure the role of Napoleonic soldier Sharpe in the long-running British series of television movies.
I won't argue that "Patriot Games" is the equal of "The Hunt for Red October," because it's not. But they're also very different films, more cousins than siblings. Let's put it this way: I think Alec Baldwin could play Jack Ryan, because nobody knew who either one of them was. Harrison Ford played Harrison Ford in his movie, because that's what movie stars do.
“The Martian” was formulaic, but also innovative. Those things don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
This space adventure story cribbed its plot from “Gravity,” “Cast Away” and similar tales of a person stranded in an inhospitable location and forced to innovate to stay alive and keep their body, and soul, nourished. Matt Damon plays Mark Watney, a botanist stranded on Mars when a storm forces the evacuation of the rest of his team, who mistake him for dead.
But the film also took the unusual tack – borrowed from the novel by Andy Weir – of making this an incredibly joyful and even humorous journey. Even as we fret about Watney’s chances of living, since it will take any rescue mission years to reach him, we’re charmed by his easy humor and self-awareness.
Talking into video cameras for the sake of the mission logs, Damon makes jokes about becoming a “space pirate” when he borrows some international equipment, and records his efforts to grow food using some ingenious (but gross) techniques.
The film is essentially divided into two halves: the first mostly concentrates on Watney’s struggle to survive, and the second on the NASA scientists back on Earth trying to come up with a way to save him. This structure ends up being very important to the film’s success: we spend an hour getting to know Watney, so we can decide he’s worth the herculean effort to save him in the second hour.
Director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Drew Goddard give us a humanistic disaster flick, filled with just enough darkness and peril for us to appreciate the light and laughter. Sometimes familiar stories can show a new and compelling face with the right turn.
Video extras are decent, though the lack of a definitive making-of documentary or commentary track is a bit vexing. The Blu-ray edition comes with a gag reel, gallery of production still photos, and a half-dozen or so featurettes focusing on translating the novel, casting the film, creating costumes and sets, and more.
We're familiar by now with the standard attributes of the space disaster genre. "The Martian" checks them off one by one: astronaut marooned in the reaches of outer space, desperate struggles to survive, ingenuity overcoming dire circumstance, people back on Earth trying frenetically to puzzle out a solution, more unexpected setbacks, more spontaneous improvisation, death licking at the protagonist's heels, salvation.
What's different is the tone and the approach to storytelling. "The Martian" is exhilarating, joyous -- and surprisingly funny. If it's possible to make a feel-good movie about cheating death, then this is it.
Based on the novel by Andy Weir, the film is part "Gravity" and part "Cast Away." It leaves Matt Damon stranded on Mars, where he must survive for months and potentially years with limited resources. He wanders deep inside his own head, talking to himself constantly -- ostensibly for the station's video logs but mostly as a way to keep himself sane. Then the second half is about the effort, undertaken seemingly by the entire world, to rescue him.
What's interesting is that director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Drew Goddard don't make any attempt to get to know the characters before disaster strikes, jumping right into the mayhem. Much like "Mad Max: Fury Road," the story allows the characters to reveal themselves gradually over the course of a harrowing journey.
There's a mission on Mars -- third in a series of five, we're told -- and botanist Mark Watney (Damon) and the others are waylaid by a massive storm that requires they blast off early and return home. Watney is whacked unconscious by some debris, the others believe him dead, and have to leave before they themselves are killed.
From here the story turns to Watney's efforts to survive long enough to greet the next Mars landing, four years hence. But how to make his energy, oxygen, food, etc. last until then? He comes up with some pretty brilliant strategies, which I'll not reveal.
Damon is charismatic and grounded, in one of his finest performances.
Meanwhile, the NASA folks, having declared Watney dead to the world, must get things together on their end. How to establish communications with Mars? Should they devote their limited resources to saving one man? Should they tell the astronauts on their way home their comrade is still alive? They devise their own extravagant plans, a combination of altruism and covering their own asses.
On the ground, the key players include Chiwetel Ejiofor as the mission leader, passionate and aggressive; Benedict Wong as the beleaguered head of the engineers, called repeatedly upon to do things in the half the normal time; Kristen Wiig as the savvy PR gal; Sean Bean as flight commander, always advocating for the astronauts; Donald Glover as the young whiz kid with bright ideas; and Jeff Daniels as the stern NASA chief, balancing noble goals with miserly realities.
Eventually, of course, Watney's crewmates learn of his fate and must decide if they should risk their own necks to turn around and go back for him. Jessica Chastain is the decisive-yet-doubting commander; Kate Mara is the comms expert, keeper of others' secrets; Michael Peña is the pilot and resident smartass; Sebastian Stan and Aksel Hennie are the generic utility guys.
The two pieces of the movie, survivor's soliloquy and mass rescue endeavor, fit surprisingly well together. We spend the first hour getting to know Watney, growing to admire his grit and streak of humor. (Forced to commandeer some equipment while noodling around with the shadings of international maritime law, he declares himself "Mark Watney, space pirate.")
Having established in the audience's minds that Watney is worth saving, we're entirely caught up in the logistics of trying to bring him home. I think you can guess what the outcome is, but it's still a white-knuckled thrill ride getting there.
"Pixels" is the dream revenge movie for pretty much every kid who came of age post-1980: the world needs a hero, and it can only be someone who wasted countless hours and a Smaug-sized pile of quarters playing primitive arcade games at the Electric Dreams Factory (or whatever it was called in your town).
Isn't this the ultimate geek fantasy? To have the skills that were laughed at as a kid suddenly become valued in society the same way throwing deceased porcine hide is?
Since this is a geek movie, we've got to have some geeks to cheer for. Enter Adam Sandler, Josh Gad, Kevin James and Peter Dinklage. All were video game superstars circa 1982, culminating in a championship marathon in which one emerged as the victor, his exploits recorded on video for posterity and sent into space.
Unfortunately, alien boogums found the video and mistook the old-school games -- Pac-Man, Defender, Centipede, Joust, Frogger, Q-bert, etc. -- as a challenge. They whipped up some versions of these digital "warriors" and sent them to Earth to do battle with humans.
They even look like the old 8-bit versions of the arcade characters, crude and seemingly pixilated when blown up to giant size. Though not as big as you might think: the poster shows a behemoth Pac-Man slurping up San Francisco in one gulp, but in the movie he's about the size of a smallish RV.
It's a goofy premise, courtesy of screenwriters Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling, based on a short film by Patrick Jean. It's kind of a rip-off of "Ghostbusters," with brainy losers vaulted into champions, but the notion still holds appeal.
Directed by hitmeister Chris Columbus, "Pixels" is breezy, dimwitted, action-filled and goofy. I certainly was never bored, though some of the gags and story threads were better left snipped on the editing room floor.
For instance, we're supposed to believe that James' character, Cooper, has grown up to be the President of the United States. Except he's not some competent, savvy politician, but the standard doofus Kevin James character he plays in every movie. Not surprisingly, his POTUS has become a laughingstock.
It's hard to believe anybody would ever vote such a guy into the highest office in the land... though I should note as I write this, Donald Trump is leading in the polls.
Brenner (a bored-looking Sandler) had the most natural talent of any gamer, but his confidence was shot when he lost the championship. Now he's become a Geek Squad-like drone who sets up tech for other people. Getting tapped by his best buddy in the White House to lead the fight against the invaders starts his underachiever-cum-savior journey.
Gad plays Ludlow, a wallflower who grew up to be a conspiracy theorist. He gets some of the best lines in the picture, and the "Book of Mormon" star also gets to belt out a tune for no good reason, other than it's nice to listen to.
Michelle Monaghan shows up, because the studio honchos felt we needed a pretty girl to look at. She's a military officer who takes an instant shine/dislike/maybe love? attitude toward the Sandler character.
Dinklage steals most of his scenes as Eddie, aka "Fire Blaster," an egocentric gamer who won the '82 championship (and also gave himself that nickname). Sporting a ferocious mullet and Southern-fried patter of quips about how awesome he is, Eddie is a despicable hoot. Actually, with the hair and self-puffery he reminds me of Donald Trump, though reportedly Dinklage based him on a real-life jerk seen in the excellent video game documentary, "The King of Kong."
Arriving as the summer movie season is cooling down, "Pixels" is clearly third-string fare, the sort of thing you go see while waiting for the movies that came out in May to hit video. It's decently entertaining, though it needed less Sandler and more mullet for the win.
One of the largest box office bombs in recent memory, “Jupiter Ascending” just may mark the end of big-budget filmmaking for the Wachowski siblings. After lighting up imaginations and accountant spreadsheets with “The Matrix,” the Wachowskis have failed to capture lightning in a bottle again.
This lackluster sci-fi adventure represents their last, dim spark.
Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum are two underwhelming performers, and their combination yields exponential results in sheer thespian dreadfulness. Kunis substitutes a pinch-faced pout for emotion, and Tatum’s expression when his character is in turmoil mostly closely resembles constipation.
She is Jupiter Jones, lowly maid who turns out to be the inheritor of the Earth – literally – who’s being hunted by her family (sorta), an all-powerful galactic clan who harvest entire planets for the life essence of the inhabitants. Eddie Redmayne slithers and whispers as the main baddie.
He is Caine Wise, a disgraced military man-turned-bounty hunter, who becomes Jupiter’s protector and, inevitably, romantic interest. It’s essentially one big chase story, with Jupiter being repeatedly kidnapped and rescued by the various warring factions.
There’s a plethora of cool, bizarre creatures, but they’re here and gone so fast they barely have time to register. Similarly, the action scenes are filled with nifty CG special effects, but are staged confusingly.
“Jupiter Ascending” is the sort of disaster that is best experienced as unintentional comedy. Invite some friends over for some “Mystery Science Theater 3000”-style spoofing.
Bonus features consist of a number of making-of featurettes. The DVD comes with “Jupiter Jones: Destiny Is Within Us” and “Jupiter Ascending: Genetically Spliced.”
Upgrade to the Blu-ray and you add “Caine Wise: Interplanetary Warrior,” “The Wachowskis: Minds Over Matter,” “Worlds Within Worlds Within Worlds,” “Bullet Time Evolved” and “From Earth to Jupiter (And Everywhere in Between).”
"It's the sort of awful where you don't even really want to complain or criticize. You just feel bad for everyone involved."
That quote is from me, answering an email from a colleague who missed the screening of "Jupiter Ascending" due to circumstance. Normally I don't presume my e-scribblings to be worthy of sharing. But I realized as soon as I dashed it off that it's a perfect 22-word version of everything else you're about to read.
The Wachowski siblings made "The Matrix," which will stand the test of time as one of the great science fiction films. Their work has gotten more head-scratching as time has gone on, through two increasingly worse "Matrix" sequels, a daffy Day-glo romp in "Speed Racer," and the confusing-yet-still-grand "Cloud Atlas."
You can always count on the Wachowskis for sumptuous visuals, dazzling CG action and mind-trippy plots. "Jupiter Ascending" has all that, minus anything resembling a soul or artistry. If "Cloud Atlas" was nearly incoherent, this one gets us all the way there.
Watching it feels like being stuck in a bad video game we can't turn off.
The action scenes are so frenetic and fast-paced, you can barely even follow what's happening. And when things do slow down, you've got Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum to stumble, glassy-eyed, through some ridiculous dialogue. Over the years I've riffed on them separately as lifeless performers, but finally we have a movie where they can combine their wondertwin powers in terrible acting.
She is Jupiter Jones, daughter of a murdered Russian astronomer spending her days as a maid in Chicago, cleaning toilets along with her mother and aunt, and hating life. Then one day Tatum shows up as Caine Wise -- I know, I know, these sound like porn actor names -- to protect her.
Tatum's get-up in this flick is just seriously weird. He's got brown hair but a blond goatee that looks like a Brillo pad spray-painted and stuck to his chin, plus heavily mascaraed eyes and pointy elf ears. Caine claims to be a genetically spliced half-wolf ex-military legionnaire "skyjacker" who used to have wings but they got cut off when he was court martialed for biting someone, and now works as a bounty hunter.
Y'know, just a boy from the block.
It seems the universe is actually controlled by competing siblings of the noble Abrasax clan, who like to let inhabited planets fill up with people and then harvest them to be turned into this blue goo that they use to stay immortal.
What's more, Jupiter is not just a lowly maid but the genetic "reoccurrence" of the Abrasax matron, which means she's actually royalty who owns the Earth, or something. The Abrasax overlords compete to see who can control Jupiter's fate, and she ends up getting kidnapped so many times we lose track of who's on first.
The worst of the lot is Balem, played by Eddie Redmayne using a strange low whisper/moan like he's trying to channel Greta Garbo on Valium. He sees Jupiter and her kin as mere playthings for the amusement and profit-making of their bettors.
"Life is an act of consumption. The humans on your planet are but a resource waiting to be turned into capital," Balem says, just in case the we-are-the-99-percent motif wasn't obvious enough for you.
Each of the three Abrasax factions has their own set of spaceships and henchmen, so we're treated to a constant parade of bizarre figures who appear and disappear quickly, including androids, lizardmen and a little elephant guy. A lot of the imagery is imaginative, but we're barely given enough time for it to register before more eye candy is thrown at us.
At one point, Gugu Mbatha-Raw turns up as a flunky with ears so ridiculously big and fake, they actually make Caine's seem cool.
The only time I smiled was when Jupiter and Caine wade into an intergalactic bureaucracy to establish her birthright, and it's a dense Dickensian steampunk fantasy of hobbit-like figures and gadgetry, and I thought we'd suddenly wandered into a Terry Gilliam movie. And we did, or at least a brief homage, complete with Gilliam himself.
But then it becomes "Jupiter Ascending" again, and how depressing is that?
In an age of instant on-demand video and streaming movies on Netflix and other venues, HBO by all rights should have been well on its way to the video grave, laid to rest nestled between Betamax and laserdiscs. In 2012 the idea of rotating theatrical feature films on a pay-per-view television channel -- its name is an acronym for Home Box Office, remember -- seems positively anachronistic.
But somewhere along the way, HBO decided to shift to creating its own content, rather than be swept under the tide of competitors playing the same movies (often more cheaply and/or conveniently). Today, it produces much of the best television available -- as evidenced by the fact that HBO regularly cleans up at the Emmys, and other movie-centric channels like AMC and FX have followed their lead into original programming.
Take "Game of Thrones," based on the first book of a popular fantasy series by George R. R. Martin. Produced for upwards of $60 million, the 10-episode season allowed viewers to luxuriate in Martin's epic narrative sweep and sprawling cast of characters.
Written for grownups, with layered characters blessed with moral ambiguities and flaws, Martin's book could not have translated satisfactorily into a two-hour film. With 10 full hours to roam, uninterrupted by commercials or the need to synch with the forced storytelling rhythms of regular TV, "Game" took the sword-and-sorcery genre to a level of ambition not seen since the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy nearly a decade ago.
It's the story of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, a loosely-held alliance of factions constantly vying for power. Lord Stark (Sean Bean) is the loyal friend of King Baratheon (Mark Addy), a once-great warrior grown haughty and indolent. When the king taps Stark to be his right-hand man, it forces the noble Stark clan to become embroiled in the high-stakes politics and infighting that swirl constantly around the Iron Throne.
DVD and Blu-ray features are first-rate. The DVD contains a making-of documentary, profiles of 15 major characters, an interactive overview of all the noble houses, and several other features. Most impressive: seven separate audio commentary tracks by the cast and crew, including author Martin.
The Blu-ray edition adds more interactive features, including 24 histories of the Seven Kingdoms as told by the characters themselves with animated illustrations. It also boasts an in-episode guide and hidden "dragon egg" bonus content.
"Game of Thrones" arrives on video Tuesday, March 6.
