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A Quiet Place: Day One

A Quiet Place: Day One

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Here’s a trick question:  How do the aliens in the A Quiet Place franchise arrive on Earth?  The answer is…we don’t know.  In the sequel and this prequel, all we are shown is streaks of light tearing across the sky.  The assumption is that they arrive in space ships, but neither film gives us any indication of what those look like.  For a typical alien invasion movie, seeing the alien spaceship(s) is the money shot–think Independence Day, War of the Worlds and The Day the Earth Stood Still.  Amazingly, three movies into this franchise, the alien’s mode of transport is still a mystery.

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Evil Does Not Exist

Evil Does Not Exist

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Of all the reasons people use to justify developing previously untouched land, creating a glamping site has to be right up there.  I was unfamiliar with the term before seeing Evil Does Not Exist, and after two characters explained what it meant I was appalled.  The thought of bulldozing trees and smoothing a natural landscape so that rich people can have a glamorous camping experience is silly, but I fully understood why people would pay for it.  Unlike a public camping site, glamping offers amenities and resort-style services.  There’s no need to “rough it” when you can relax in the equivalent of a hotel room nestled amongst trees.  (This begs the question as to whether an activity can even be called camping if there are no inconveniences involved.)  Second, glamping is all about exclusivity.  There’s no need to worry about camping around normal, everyday people when you can use your money to pitch your yurt next to other rich people like yourself.

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Civil War

Civil War

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When I first saw the trailer for Civil War, I was underwhelmed.  It looked like a standard action movie, so much so that I wondered when Gerard Butler (star of the “Has Fallen” franchise) would show up to save the country from itself.  The combat footage didn’t look special, and the plot of the movie appeared to be entirely about how “America is fighting with itself”.  It wasn’t until people that I follow on social media explained the movie that I reconsidered seeing it.  While Civil War may be a nightmare scenario inspired by the Trump presidency, the movie isn’t about that at all.  For example, the movie’s Trump surrogate (a perfectly cast Nick Offerman) is barely shown in the movie.  (Not that I needed more than I got.)  And while Civil War may look like a traditional war movie at times, its primary focus is on how wars are represented by the media, specifically journalists.

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Lord of the Flies (novel)

Lord of the Flies (novel)

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I was familiar with the premise of Lord of the Flies long before I read the book.  The book has had a continual presence in Western culture since it was released in 1954, to the point where the title has become a established metaphor for describing a group of unruly children.  My impetus for reading Golding’s novel now was the Showtime series Yellowjackets.  I’d read that the series was originally conceived as an all-female adaptation of the book, but that the writers behind the show decided instead to use the story as the basis for an examination of teenage hierarchy.  Even though I’d read that Yellowjackets diverged widely from the book after the setup, knowing that Flies was one of the sources of its inspiration finally motivated me to read it.

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Anatomy of a Fall

Anatomy of a Fall

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Anatomy of a Fall looks and sounds like a standard courtroom drama.  It opens with a startling scene, where a young boy named Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) returns from a walk with his dog to find his father dead on the snowy ground outside the chalet where his family lives.  Daniels’ mother Sandra (Sandra Hüller) rushes outside and calls for an ambulance.  When the police arrive, she explains that she was asleep when Samuel (Samuel Theis) jumped to his death.  The police, however, don’t buy her story.  After analyzing the crime scene and digging into Samuel’s past, they conclude that Sandra pushed her husband to his death.  Charges are filed against her, and the resulting trial includes the requisite scenes of prosecutor/witness pyrotechnics.  On this level, the story would serve as a gripping episode of Law & Order: The French Alps.

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American Fiction

American Fiction

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American Fiction belongs to a genre of films that I always appreciate, the portrait of the frustrated artist.  This genre includes artists who work in various mediums (painters, sculpture, etc.), musicians, actors and of course writers.  American Fiction is about a writer named Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), and the reasons why he is frustrated with his career are made evident within the opening minutes of the movie.  Monk’s latest book has been rejected nine times, so he’s forced to teach to earn a living.  He hates the job because he doesn’t suffer fools lightly.  Monk believes he’s the smartest person in whatever room he walks into, and even though he’s usually right, nobody wants to have it rubbed in their faces.  He brandishes his intelligence like a sidearm and is willing to duel with anyone who dares disagree with him about anything.  When a white student says she’s offended by the n-word, he bluntly tells her that if he can get over it, so can she.  When an antagonistic colleague critiques his output and lack of publishing success, Monk retorts that quality takes time and that being purchased by travelers when they buy their neck pillows and Cheese-Its is not an achievement.  Monk’s insistence of his intellectual superiority over others dates back to his childhood, when his siblings gave him the nickname “Detective Dictionary”.

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Past Lives

Past Lives

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Everyone knows a couple who are so perfect for each other that you can’t imagine them apart.  We think of them as soulmates, two people who were destined to be together.  The notion that there is someone out there who is only meant for you is an incredibly romantic one.  You hope that you’ll find that special someone one day, and consider yourself fortunate when you do.  Sometimes, finding your soulmate is incredibly easy.  Past Lives tells the story of Na Young (Moon Seung-ah, Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Leem Seung-min, Teo Yoo) who, beginning when they were twelve-years old, are obviously meant for each other.  They’re inseparable at school, laughing at their private jokes.  Na’s outgoing and friendly personality and Hae’s quiet and sensitive nature compliment each other perfectly.  When their mothers arrange a playdate, they are immediately convinced that Na and Mae will be married one day.  Unfortunately, fate intervenes when Na’s parents decide to emigrate to Toronto.  This is devastating news for Hae, who is the hopeless romantic between the two of them.  Na is also sad at leaving Hae behind, but she embraces this big change in her life.  She wants to become a writer and tells her classmates that Korea has never produced a writer who won the Nobel prize for literature.

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May December

May December (Netflix)

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May December is not merely clever, it’s diabolical.  That’s the best way I can describe a movie that adopts a persona to hide its true intentions–while telling a story about characters who do the exact same thing.  On the surface, Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) is a professional actress who wants to learn everything she can about Gracie (Julianne Moore), the basis of her next role in an independent movie.  Like the real life case involving Mary Kay Letourneau, Gracie seduced Joe (Charlie Melton) when he was in grade school.  Elizabeth says she wants to give a true performance of Gracie and does what actors normally do to prepare for their next role.  She interviews the people involved, scouts locations and scours the media coverage of the incident.   However, it soon becomes evident that Elizabeth’s intentions aren’t as noble as she says they are.  Additionally, understanding Gracie and Joe is difficult, given how they’ve learned to shield themselves with their own performances for the past twenty years.

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