Little Fish

Mild spoilers.

In this indie drama, there's a global pandemic (I know, I know, but bear with me) in which people lose their memories for no discernable reason. Pilots forget how to fly. Musicians forget how to play. And loved ones forget the people they love. Jude and Emma (Jack O'Connell and Olivia Cooke) are a married couple. And when Jude gets the disease and his memories begin to fade, they fight to figure out how to save their relationship. 

I could tell how it would end from the beginning. And I wouldn't call that a flaw, but it did lead me to pay careful attention to the movie overall, and that led to noticing a few things that felt wrong or uncharacteristic. Firstly, there were some covid similarities that were so unnecessary I wonder if they were intentional. The disease isn't contagious from person to person, yet one scene inexplicably has characters wearing medical masks. Why? For that dramatic moment where he rips it off? Or just to annoy me?

But that's superficial. More seriously, there were characterization flaws that did more than irk me. One undermined the movie's thematic argument, it made so little sense. It was a good plot point to give Jude the opportunity to participate in a clinical trial, but not let him go through with it. When he decides not to on his own reasoning, it makes sense. When the trials are successful and he regrets it, it makes sense. It even makes sense to try it illegally later when he's getting desperate (though in real life I'd expect a lot of doctors would do it on the down-low and he wouldn't have had to ask Emma.) But it doesn't make sense at all when they reject him after he changes his mind because there are drugs in his system.

Because the movie's thematic argument is that people aren't defined by what they can remember about themselves. Emma's worry is that their relationship is based on shared memories, but the movie definitively declares that that's not true by the end. Yet it asks us to believe that Jude would relapse after five years of sobriety just because he bumped into an old friend one time? The movie wants us buy that he did this unimaginably out-of-character thing, and declares it reasonable because he can't remember doing it. But no—whether he remembers it later or not, he was always the same person, who had stopped using for good. I feel like I'm missing something here too, because we're never told why he decided to quit, though Emma asks him. We're never told what might tempt him back. We're told he would never, ever, ever, and then we're told that he did. And it all could have been avoided by having the clinic fill his spot before he changes his mind. 

Inconsistencies like that bother me even more in films like this, because for me, the appeal of films like this is to put realistic characters in a strange, heightened situation and watch how they react. The point is to push them to do things you might not expect them capable of, but the study is ruined if they act out of their established character for no reason.

On to the good things. I love Olivia Cooke. She's a fantastic actor. She fits the movie perfectly. And Jack O'Connell matches her. They're a great centerpiece for the film, running through tons of emotional variety and generally being engaging and believable characters who I enjoyed following through their story. The cinematography was lovely. I loved the way scenes would alter as they remembered different or wrong things about the past. And it kept me on my toes to have the timeline not totally linear. It's tonally depressed, but not in a dark or bleak way. It's sweetly sad and relaxing, and ultimately positive and hopeful. And I love the message it brings, even if it doesn't stay on point and accidentally undermines itself in the middle. It wraps up nice and neat, and fortunately for it, if the beginning and end of a movie tie so closely together, that's what I'll remember best. 

Not a perfect film, but a fascinating, thoughtful, and appealingly artistic one, great for people who are fans of using high-concept premises to tell introspective character stories.

Upcoming Movie Roundup - June

Last month, all I saw was Detective Pikachu. It's was a good and fun time (review!). I haven't even gotten to my Netflix show The Rain yet, but I will. I skipped John Wick 3, Aladdin, and so far have skipped Godzilla too, but that just came out so we'll see.

The movie slump seems to be continuing into June. There are a few that look interesting and a few that I feel mildly obliged to see, but there's only one that I'm really excited for. And it's summer now, so that's kind of sad. Does anything look better to y'all than it does to me?


Dark Phoenix
In theaters June 7th; PG-13
Any chance this movie doesn't turn out to be anticlimactic? And now that the characters are destined to be rebooted and recast by Marvel there seems even less reason to be interested. It's a good thing, really. Most of these young actors are very good and extremely wasted on these chopped-up half-roles where they barely even are allowed to act. Since I've seen all the X-Man movies so far, and since I do like the cast, I'll be seeing this, probably even in theaters, but my expectations will be set low.




Katie Says Goodbye
Limited release and streaming June 7th; NR
Very likely to be very heavy on the mature content (the trailer is not appropriate for all audiences, just a warning) but I can't help but be intrigued. The tone is different, the plot seems sincere, and the cast of Olivia Cooke and Christopher Abbott sounds great. So I will keep an eye on it.




Men in Black International
In theaters June 14th; PG-13
Ugh. The trailer looks bad, and I didn't even like Thor Ragnarok, so there's very little appeal to this paring for me. That's all I guess.




The Dead Don't Die
Limited release June 14th; R
The first and only movie this month that I'm extremely excited for, and the only one I'm determined to see ASAP. Adam Driver. BIll Murray. Low-key comedy. Zombies. Sold. Sold, sold, and sold! Some people have been saying it's underwhelming, so maybe I'll wind up disappointed, but it's a risk I just plain HAVE to take because there's no way I'm passing this up.




Being Frank
Limited release June 14th; NR
Logan Miller finds out his dad is leading a double life and has two families. Hijinks ensue. The trailer starts out interesting but the longer it plays and the more it gives away the less it seems to be advertising a good movie... but I still kinda want to find out. I liked Logan in Escape Room earlier this year anyway, and it's a teen comedy -- does it really need to be great to be worth watching? I dunno, maybe.




Toy Story 4
In theaters June 21st; G
This whole thing is such a big, giant, "No thank you" for me that I didn't even want to watch the trailer. Because I won't be seeing it, but who am I to pass my biased "I saw these movies when I was a kid and now they're made for today's kids and that's dumb" opinions on people inclined to enjoy it? So yeah, live and let live. Thanks but no thanks Pixar, I'll wait for Onward.




Anna
Limited release June 21st; R
A movie I'm more interested in because of who's involved than out of being convinced by a trailer. The trailer makes it look oddly cheap to me, but it's Luc Besson, so maybe it'll be better than it looks. I did like his last movie, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, and the lead girl here (Sasha Luss) is the same who played the alien princess in that movie via mo-cap. So that's cool. Helen Mirren, Luke Evans, and Cillian Murphy are also here and Cillian and Sasha appear to have a quiet competition going over whose eyes are bluer.




Yesterday
In theaters June 28th; PG-13
In this movie a Beatles fan hits his head and when he wakes up The Beatles don't exist anymore. But he still knows all their songs so he pretends to have written them himself and takes all the credit, throwing him into a classic rom-com trope of getting something good out of a giant lie that you know will eventually come crashing down but it'll be okay because he'll end up with the girl in the end -- and that girl is Lily James, so I'll watch the movie.




Ophelia
Limited release June 28th; PG-13
This is the most frustrating thing I've ever seen? Daisy Ridley as Opheilia. George MacKay as Hamlet. Tom Felton as Laertes. Clive Own as Claudius. Naomi Watts as Gertrude. I would watch this Hamlet adaptation in half a heartbeat. But it's not a Hamlet adaptation, it's a re-imagining. It's everything from Ophelia's perspective. Why? Beats me. I haven't seen all the actual Hamlet adaptations that I'd like to, so I don't want to bother with spin-off type material that likely doesn't include the lines Shakespeare wrote. But I probably will anyway at some point. And I'm sure I'll be disappointed.

Thoroughbreds

In this relaxed thriller, Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) is a very unhappy teen living in a very uncomfortable lap of luxury. She hates her step-father (Paul Sparks) but suppresses and hides her emotions. One person she can't hide from is her childhood friend Amanda (Olivia Cooke). When they reconnect after a while, Amanda admits that she is incapable of feeling emotion, and as a result is perceptive enough to see through Lily's mask. She's also supremely cold and logical, so when she suggests that Lily might murder her mean step-father, the idea... rather takes hold.

Good breeding doesn't mean beans when it comes to the human heart.

The prominent feature here is character study. It's character study mostly by observation because characters never analyze themselves and when they analyze each other is more often says more about the character doing the analyzing. We watch them interact and make decisions and slowly a clear picture emerges. The movie utilizes every facet at its disposal, both in technical film techniques and the more organic ones, creating a machine of many moving parts that work together to point to the same conclusion.

On the "well, duh" side: casting, acting, and characterization. Olivia Cooke's naturally blank deadpan is fascinating in that you would never learn a thing about her from watching her face. For her, we must look to body language, dialogue because Amanda is an honest person, and decisions. Decisiveness is important to Amanda and she has a solid, if skewed view of morality. With Anya Taylor-Joy, her emotions boil under her face, and while she tries to hide behind a stone mask, what does leak through is the good stuff. Emotion drives her and overcomes her sense of morality.

Who's the real psycho here...?

These two characters are almost opposites, and as such they inform our understanding of each as we compare them. Then you must add Anton Yelchin's character to the mix, because without his Tim, there's not quite an ideal balance. Tim is older, less privileged, already has mistakes under his belt, and aspires to be like the two girls already are. He wants wealth and power, and think he has what it takes to achieve that through dealing drugs. But without anti-social disorders or a lifetime of oppressed emotion and lying, that's a path that he's surprisingly ill-equipped to take.

Next, and probably my favorite aspect of the film is the camerawork. Long Takes is the name of the game, but not in a showy, complicated, "look at me" kind of way. It's simple: the camera is placed in a spot where it can view a whole scene with only adjusting focus as a character moves in and out... and it watches. It doesn't decide for us which part of the performance is the most telling; it stays out of our way. Zoom-ins are used to express importance of the moment, and there's plenty of shot-reverse-shot too. I think the idea was to capture the story and character is the simplest, most comfortable, and most effective way possible.

Love him. There's still movies of his I haven't seen, but I never want to finish them.

You don't want to notice shot length or the reasoning behind a shot composition while watching; you just want it to make the desired effect. With this not showy but intentional method, it did its job -- I had to watch it again to pick up on it fully, spurred by the longest oner -- a three-minute one that was masterful. I adore watching films with minimal cutting and being able to see performances play out -- to be allowed to look at what I want to, instead of the camera's framing forcing me to look somewhere where I don't see performance coming from. When a performance is as good as this cast gives, different people will see it in different places.

Even with their backs to the camera they are still readable, and when they're off screen the sound effects take over, and you'd might be surprised at how telling they can be too. Paring the heightened moments that would tend to overload down to only sound focuses the tension and engages the imagination. And it allows the film to keep it's deliberate, relaxed pace even through the crazier parts. The soundtrack also needs a mention: it's mainly spastic tribal drums which is hilariously fitting to the otherworldly setting. At one point a character's running footsteps could be easily confused for scoring too.

It's all so wonderfully strange.

Despite dark subject matter and the character study of extremely flawed humans that you'd rather be fascinated by than identify with, the film is well grounded in entertainment. Richly comic in wonderfully subtle and dark ways that works alongside the film's other moods for beautiful and unexpected combinations. My favorite bit was Ave Maria playing as Tim slow-motion smells soap and caresses a shiny red car in Lily's fancy house. Drop-dead gorgeous. I also loved watching the girls act in front of mirrors, and the neat detail where Amanda only uses the pawns and knights as she plays chess with herself.

Thoroughbreds is stimulating to watch, never lacking visual interest on screen that draws the eye and engages the mind, so even as the film moves casually and methodically it is not for one second boring. Its fascinating characters aren't spelled out for us, and the final delivery isn't a message or moral, but simply a few character journeys that will make you think hard about their situation, their burdens, and their decisions. We are invited not to judge, but to understand -- as we are entertained by the film's lavish, well-bred existence.

Ready Player One

Spoiler-free!

Based on the book by Ernest Cline that's an absolute smorgasbord of 80's pop culture, Ready Player One takes place in a near future where the rundown world is all but abandoned by its populace. In its place -- the OASIS, a virtual reality where people can go anywhere and do or be anything, all from the comfort of their cramped, neglected homes.

Laws of reality need not apply.

One such person is Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), whose life outside the OASIS is, well, nonexistent. But in the OASIS, he's Parzival, a gunter (egg hunter) who looks for Easter eggs left by the game's creator James Halliday (Mark Rylance). Upon his death Halliday instigated a hunt for three keys that would lead to the ultimate Easter egg. The finder would receive Halliday's inheritance and full control over the OASIS itself. The hunt has been going on for years without even the first key being found when Wade finally figures out the first challenge, and the discovery launches him into adventure, fame, and real-world danger all at once as the race for the OASIS begins.

It's been a long time since Steven Spielberg has done science fiction, and the result it something that is a little -- and pleasantly so, I might add -- out of time. The featured tech and special effects are fully modern but the plot and characters move in a more traditional "blockbuster" sphere. The three keys make the act structure strongly defined, with no room for anything unprecedented, and characters are well cast but then left to catch what little bits of development and arcs they can on the run, as the action-driven plot breaks for nothing. Though deeper development without sacrifice elsewhere would've been more ideal, the characters are accurate to their book counterparts -- stunningly accurate to my memory -- and that is due to pitch-perfect casting.

I knew it was perfect when I first saw the cast list but they still managed to wow me.

Every actor I know here has given a better performance elsewhere, yet I don't think the cast could be more perfect. Tye Sheridan was more comfortable and natural in Mud, and Olivia Cooke had even more genuine charm in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl -- they both still fit their characters to a T. Ben Mendelsohn is basically playing Krennic from Rogue One, but boy is it fun to watch him be that type of baddie. I am sure that Mark Rylance has never given a bad performance in his life, but even he has his exceptionally charming turn as the eccentric geek Halliday beat elsewhere -- though this may be a personal favorite for me due to the charm and humor he gives alone.

Simon Pegg's American accent threw me through a loop and his small part felt almost like a cameo, but he still managed to sneak some dramatic oomph in there. The adults are undoubtedly the acting highlights of the film. Aech, Daito and Sho are good casting as well, but used only for support, comic relief, and to make the point of how anyone can be anything in the OASIS. Sheridan doesn't lead the film so much as he's swept along at the front of the wave that is the plot, but the fact remains: he embodies Wade ideally. The roles here are on the shallow side by nature. More depth may have improved them, but whether it would've served the movie as a whole is another matter.

As much as I love character, I do think putting them on a lower priority was the right move here.

After all I would hate for a scifi adventure flick to have to give up any time adventuring, world-building and wowing for the sake of unnecessary character development -- however great the development may be. There were a few times I would have tended more toward character briefly, but I understand the idea. This is a crazy and complex scifi world here, and explaining and exploring it satisfactorily takes priority. Spielberg erred on the safe side, over-explaining at times, but the flaw isn't in the intention. He took the right track of making the character/plot balance the same ratio as the book, and was impressively successful in it.

I liked the book, but it's flawed. Most of the movie's flaws stem from that, as a fundamental part of the story. I've seen plenty of worthy but flawed books be adapted into film and commonly, "improvement" is the name of the game. Sometimes said "improvement' makes the story so convoluted that it becomes completely different, and often falls apart. (The Divergent series springs rapidly to mind.) I'm surprised to say, that I'm impressed to say: Spielberg refused to play that game. Instead he took the story as it was and put in on film. "But what about all the changes?" you may wonder. Simple: those changes were for the purpose of making the story as enjoyable as possible on screen, not to improve a story cynically seen as lacking.

I loved this scene, mixing live action with animated avatars.

Forgetting the book, this film is a sight unlike any other. The motion-capture does excellent job capturing personality as well as performances, so characters are consistent even as animated avatars. Everything has that Spielberg sheen, and the detail of the OASIS is thrilling and visually stimulating without being too overwhelming. And pop culture. Pop culture everywhere. I loved it, but that's the sort of thing that's about personal preference, not so much a if-it's-done-right-everyone-will-love-it type thing. I do think it transcends the references it makes -- much like Stranger Things did -- but admittedly I love 80's pop culture already. I especially enjoyed the music, since that was something the book was incapable of doing.

This is a movie about Easter eggs, so it's no surprise that its main feature be Easter eggs. Still it doesn't settle for fun references only, putting commendable effort into garnering maximum enjoyment out of its entire runtime. Even if you don't get the references it should be a thoroughly entertaining flick -- through a fast-paced plot, fun characters, a straightforward and sincere theme, a general lighthearted tone, and that patent Spielbergian element that adds just a dash of cheesy magic.

I promise -- this movie does have a point to it, and a heart.

This is certainly not a movie without flaws, but the more I watch films by Spielberg, the more I realize that his filmmaking greatness isn't in making unflawed films, but in making films that will stand the test of time by their joy and the unique experiences they give us, long after a film's given technical expiration date. And the more I watch movies in 2018, the more I realize that it's this kind of simple, honest joy that I want to see on the screen -- that reaffirms my love for the singular magic of escaping into the movies.