Reviews

Prior to seeing this film, I had heard Don't Look Up contained a rather ham fisted political message. This made me reluctant. However, thinking about it, it didn't seem like one should necessarily draw a straight parallel to climate change. The premise of a comet striking earth can also be interpreted as "We may not know the exact effects of climate change, we may not know exactly how to handle the coronavirus, but how would 21st century humanity handle a disaster that was guaranteed?" (Note that this is my interpretation, perhaps the director thinks otherwise.)

Also, I loved Anchorman as a kid, and figured it'd at least be a good laugh.

Starting from this concept, the film is successful as a thought experiment. It raises some interesting questions about politics, conflicting interests, human paranoia, etc. Additionally, the concept is so powerfully resonant in present times that it occasionally pulled me in entirely, made me genuinely worried for the fate of the earth.

So far so good, but I say occasionally. This is a film, not a thought experiment. Did it succeed as that?

Let's start with the good. The acting is was mostly amazing. Although some characters succeeded more than others, the actors were never to blame; they did all they could with the script. Particularly:

• Jennifer Lawrence is surprisingly credible as a (way too beautiful) PhD student as Kate Dibiasky, although perhaps a bit too much student and too little PhD;
• Leonardo DiCaprio does an incredible job portraying an anxious, awkward astronomer. Even as Dr. Mindy transforms into an adored, confident doctor, DiCaprio never pushes this too far and maintains the image of an awkward professor. Bravo!

• Meryl Streep I did not find very convincing as Jamie Orlean, a populist politician and president. Particularly during her speeches, she seemed too normal, as though she did not find her lane. Perhaps if she had, the character would've received more screen time and felt like a genuine villain; now, she felt like an attempt at comic relief.

• Jonah Hill is credible as Jason Orlean, the awkward son, but the comedy never really hits home entirely (more on this later).

• Mark Rylance as Peter Isherwell had great stage presence, with the combined awkwardness and intimidation of an Asperger billionaire.

• Rob Morgan, as Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe, was a good straight man, although the script did no justice to his character. Halfway through the film, he drops the mic and disappears, only to reappear for the final scene.

Minor characters portrayed by Cate Blanchet and Timothée Chalamet were effective (although, how old was Chalamet supposed to be?). Yet the casting did suffer from a Hollywood Pool Party syndrome, dragging in Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi, Ron Perlman, etc. For minor roles that relied heavily on their persona outside the film for their stage presence. This I find a major weakness in any script. It is using a hefty budget to buy credibility off-the-shelf.

Another thing that succeeded was the cinematography. The film is beautiful to watch, especially the final scenes, in which the comet comes into view. Transitions are smooth, locations are always credible, just stellar production all around.

Finally, what I enjoyed most about the film was the character development of Dr. Mindy. The script toyed with a truly interesting idea, that despite the world ending, this final half year would be the best year of Dr. Mindy's life. Overnight, he became the most interesting person in the world and, perhaps more importantly, sexy! The notion that his all too human mind could not comprehend the world ending but could most certainly feel this transformation was a deeply interesting subtheme - one that, for me, could've driven the entire film.

A strong concept, great acting, beautiful cinematography, even some interesting character development! What can go wrong? Well, despite all this, I found myself thoroughly bored throughout this film. An hour in, I paused to catch my breath and saw another 77 minutes left on the clock.

My engagement with this film was very spotty. Occasionally, I felt myself completely drawn in, such as on the first talk show appearance or when they launched the shuttles. But then a scene would drag on and I would feel my engagement slip into boredom. This happened time and time again, to the point of frustration. It was a new experience for me. Usually, I am either bored and disengaged, or drawn in and loving it. Sure, a plot point can ruin a film, but then I am disengaged from that point on. Here, the disengagement was cyclical, like a sinusoid.

I think the reason is that this film has an identity crisis. Is it a comedy? Well, it isn't very funny. The topic is not silly enough and most of its main characters are too deadpan to make the comedy work. Conversely, there is plenty room for a drama plot in DiCaprio's portrayal of Dr. Mindy alone, but it is constantly interrupted by the asinine attempts at comedy. The result is a classic mistake in any script: the audience constantly gets told what to think.

For instance, there is a scene in which Jennifer Lawrence's character in the oval office states the obvious, that she did not vote for President Streep, after which Jonah Hill's character adds a few lines that are supposed to be funny. The scene doesn't work at all. It doesn't work as drama, because it is redundant, and it doesn't work as comedy, because it isn't set up properly.

Similarly, there is a scene where Dr. Mindy tries to confront billionaire Peter Isherwell, who deflects by breaking down Mindy based on data analysis from his company, among which the conclusions that 'he seeks pleasure and runs from pain' and 'will die alone.' This squashes Mindy's character entirely. There was so much potential there, for the over-analysing scientist who fails to rise to the occasion due to his moment in the spotlight, but it never takes off. Instead, we get these ridiculous scenes, that are neither funny nor serious enough.

The result of these failed scenes is a strange flatness in the film. It is neither deep nor intelligent enough to be emotionally engaging, but it doesn't reach the comedic highs that rewards the audience for sitting through the scenes. Stuff just kind off happens. A good example is the 'Just Look Up' and 'Don't Look Up' juxtaposition of political movements when the comet becomes visible. The 'Just Look Up' movement is ominous and beautiful: people can no longer deny what they can see with their own eyes. The 'Don't Look Up' movement is just a silly afterthought that makes a fool of any Trump voter. It must've made a lot of sense in the writing room as an inclusion in a political comedy about a comet, but it doesn't work on the screen.

In conclusion, I had expected the film to be insulting to the audience from the conceptual perspective, clearly hammering home that anyone who has any doubts about climate change is an idiot. I did not find it to be so - although a Trump voter may certainly see this differently. However, I mostly found it insulting from the usual perspective: the script.

!CONTAINS SPOILERS!

I'll say right off the bat: I am not an enormous Bond fan. Films that are heavy on action but low on suspense (meaning, we already know the outcome) don't work for me, unless they are perhaps a nice side dish to an otherwise compelling story.

This film had plenty such nonsense scenes, in which an invincible Bond came unscathed out of unlikely situations. But it offered much more.

First of all, Léa Seydoux as Madeleine was so effective as an enigmatic lover, that I was hooked in the first act. Second, the film contained enough comedic relief that it did not feel as though it took itself too seriously, as did some of the previous installments. Third, his connections with Felix at the CIA and the rivalry with MI6 and the new 007 were an original take on Bond. Fourth, the question of whether the child was Bond's daughter was intriguing enough. Finally, I enjoyed the mystery that was set up. The party where solely Bond survives, the question how Blofeld got into a party from his quarantine, who is behind this and where is it going?

Yet as well as this film set itself up, it had to come crashing down in the final act. I'll run through my biggest gripes.

1) The new 007, while an interesting concept, does not get her due. She is introduced mostly as a prop for us to wonder whether James Bond truly is no longer 007, only to reveal that, no, she's willing to call him 007 again. After that, she is just another invincible character. Looking back, I wonder what her role in the story was in the first place.

2) The villain, played by Rami Malek, completely missed the mark for me. Perhaps that's subjective. He is certainly creepy enough. But his motives and background are unclear. Yes, his family was killed by Madeleine's father, but he killed her mother in return. Then Spectre. Then Blofeild. Now, he wants to wipe out most of civilization? Why? It is mentioned as a side that he is in love with Madeleine. When? He also looks like he did not age, and blunders through the plot by letting Bond's child go. He feels like a placeholder villain. (It doesn't help how easy it is to infiltrate his base and foil his plans...)

I was genuinely moved by the possibility that Bond would not be able to see his family again. I knew there was threat that he might die, because this was his Craig's last film, and as stated I thought Seydoux was effective, as was Lisa-Dorah Sonnet (very impressive performance by her). But his eventual death was marked by (a) a grievance and (b) a goof. I'll admit that I'm torn between defensive cynicism to protect my feelings, here, and sincere criticism: I really was moved by the final scenes, but these remained annoying:

a) The tech that targets DNA are nano bots. As an aside, it is mentioned that 'once you touch them, they are in you forever.' That makes no real sense. If it were a synthetic virus, perhaps it could reproduce in your system and remain dormant, not unlike HIV, but unless we are talking about nanobots that can reproduce (an enormous technological leap), this makes no sense. This premise, that you remain infected forever, is mentioned as a passing comment (which got some perplexed responses out of my audience), only to have enormous consequences in the final scenes. This plays out poorly in the script: an already dead Bond can no longer touch his family, because he'd kill them. That's overkill. They could've either made the nanobots more of a threat to Bond, a way for the villain to have him do his bidding, or simply excluded this silly premise, because he's dead anyway.

B) My biggest gripe is the moment that he and the already now useless 007 place Madeleine and his newly discovered daughter, of which he is now aware, on a boat together for them to escape. This retired, new father, finally reunited with the love of his life, now goes back in to finish the job completely solo, whereas the supposedly ambitious, young (presumably single), new 007-agent stays with HIS FAMILY to protect them, far out of harms way. James Bond gets infected by the conveniently tragic nanobots and gets blown to smithereens by missiles while the new 007 gets to further her career.

This happens in passing and is just ridiculous. The only argument given by Bond, that no one protests, is "I've got to finish this." No, you really don't, anyone can finish it at this point, but you are, uniquely, the father of that child. What makes it more infuriating is that the overkill infection by the nanobots wouldn't have been a huge deal to the new 007. She could've actually escaped with her life. (Not to mention, as an aside, that the plot that he needed to open the blast doors is also considered evident by Bond because, obviously, the missiles would "bounce off that like a trampoline." I highly doubt the sensitive lab equipment would survive the entire island being blasted, but alright, we needed an argument for him to go back in I suppose.)

Again, I was moved by his death and his inability to see his family again, but it doesn't help when the script of a film, that cost hundreds of millions to make, does such a poor job at getting us to that punchline. It also really makes me wonder if it wouldn't have been better just to have him retire happily. I was genuinely at the edge of my seat, knowing that Bond might die, as this was Craig's final film. The could've played with that. The new 007 and Bond go back in, the villain threatens to douse Bond with the nanobots, 007 successfully bites that bullet, Bond gets shot, barely survives, etc.

It feels almost as if the final act was written by different people, whose job it was to resolve all the good stuff set up in the first act on that one island. For a film that had almost three hours to do this, I think it failed, and left me feeling moved by the enchanting performance by Léa Seydoux and the idea of a Bond family, but disappointed by the writers who turned that into a mere tear-jerker.

This movie seems to receive praise, but I am not sure why. The visuals are striking, but that is about the only redeeming factor of this movie. There is some good acting by William Hurt and Jennifer Connoly, but it is ruined by the stiff acting of Rufus Sewell, the main protagonist. At times, I wondered if they had shot the scenes with the actors in the same room.

The plot is horribly overexposed. Everything is explained by the characters in a manner clearly directed at the audience in a 'tell, don't show' manner. The few things I actually would have liked to know something about, namely why John Murdoch was special or where the alien creatures came from, was kept entirely from the audience. The movie seems to try very hard to be intellectually cohesive, without actually being clever.

By far the strongest point is the beginning, where we are left to wonder if John Murdoch is actually a killer, but the plot rushes forward so fast and explains everything so clearly that we quite quickly understand that this is not the case, and the real suspense dies. The final scene especially, where John Murdoch and the main villain duke it out in a Dragonball Z 'my-beam-versus-your-beam' battle was plain silly.

Dark City is by no means a bad movie; I've seen plenty worse with bigger budgets. But I can't recommend it, nor can I understand why people seem to think this is a classic.

It Comes at Night is tagged a horror film, but is more a psychological thriller about two families who meet after a mysterious disease has spread across the country. They know little of the situation, resulting in a very realistic sense of isolation and paranoia that is effectively conveyed in the movie.

I was impressed mostly by script and the actors. It Comes at Night does something I like a lot in movies: it tries to be natural and real and doesn't resort to cliche's in the script. It conveys the characters and their relationships through their actions and keeps them down to earth and emphatically convincing. Perhaps it was the ambition of the script to make its audience not want to scream at the screen when the characters do something stupid to drive the plot.

Yet while It Comes at Night delivers on these points and is carried by a phenomenal cast of actors, it fails to deliver on its plot. It never quite becomes a horror, doesn't dwell on the psychological conflict enough to be a proper psychological thriller, and the 'twist', while interesting, isn't really capitalized upon.

There seems to be no real point to the film either, which reminded me of the ending of Lynch's motto "Silencio": sometimes the point of a film is simply to watch, and isn't conceptual. Yet although It Comes at Night as some appealing visuals at times, it is never quite as visually stimulating as other feel-bad films like Mulholland Drive or Requiem for a Dream.

Altogether, I didn't dislike this film, and what they did on the <5 million dollar budget was definitely impressive. I would recommend the film to anyone who likes an organic plot and good acting, and doesn't mind so much that the film doesn't really go anywhere in the end.