Tower, The Florida Project, Good Time, and Annihilation are all must-sees

Time to play catch up with some movies I didn’t have a chance to write in full about, thanks to, you know, life and stuff. But there were a few VERY good ones that I’d be remiss about not discussing at least a little bit

Annihilation (2018) / A-

Available only on Netflix is Europe, yet I wish I had a chance to see it again in cinemas, because Annihilation is an audio-visual wonder that my setup didn’t do justice to. It has one of the scariest original setpieces in recent memory and builds to an abstract marvel whose comparisons to 2001 are far from unearned. I kinda wish we got to spend more time with the supporting cast, who never get their full due, but I appreciate the fleetness of it; its contemplative, but rarely languid.

Tower (2016) / A

“We just fell in love and decided to take anthropology together.” Tower takes a big risk, veering dangerously close to exploitative in animating over real news footage to create a dramatic recreation of the 1966 University of Texas shooting, with talking head interviews with animated subjects whose survival of the events is unknown. But Tower walks that line with such grace, keeping its focus on those affected by the tragedy and refusing to even show the face of the shooter. It’s a deeply affecting, strikingly beautiful, and haunting piece of docu-art. [Available on Netflix and you should watch it.]

I, Tonya (2017) / C+

I, Tonya has two main desires: redeem Tonya Harding as a person worthy of sympathy and to whom the world gave an unfair shake, and to make an entertaining idiot-criminal movie in the vein of Elmore Leonard. It mostly succeeds at the first, but its failure at the second brings the whole thing down a bit. It may be a case of truth being stranger than fiction, but Harding’s operative-wannabe bodyguard was just too much to take a certain point. While Harding’s voiceover narration is welcome, the multiple talking-heads perspective is a bit pat, particularly in giving anything regarding a sympathetic voice to Harding’s abusive ex-husband. But its portrait of Harding and Margot Robbie’s performance really are quite good, and the first half focusing on Harding and her mother is really engaging.

Good Time (2017) / A-

Robert Pattinson will win an Oscar one day, and his performance as bleach-blonde slimeball Connie Nikas in Good Time will be at the top of the list of “Reasons Why This Shouldn’t Be a Surprise”. The plot is essentially a string of half-brained schemes whose sole goal is correct the failure of the previous one, but the way Connie obscenely and plainly abuses his charm to keep his head above water is both stomach-churning and fascinating. A scathing and uncomfortable critique of capitalism and white privilege is just under the surface of it, but even as a pure surface experience, Good Time is full of striking imagery, piano-string tension, and a fantastic Oneohtrix Point Never score. If there’s a criticism, its that it knows how clever it is and doesn’t hide it, but when the experience is this visceral, who cares.

Gringo (2018) / C-

There’s a really fun crime romp for a Saturday afternoon hidden somewhere in Gringo, but damn could it use some editing to get there. It feels like the ever-growing ensemble chaos is building to a huge climax, but instead, the energy fizzles and half the characters just kinda wander off to do their own unrelated thing, like Charlize Theron’s alpha boss getting tanked with Alan Ruck. The odd monologues about The Beatles or the monkey business illusion feel like a ripoff of 1990s Tarantino ripoffs. But its concept is pretty fun when it commits to it, and the cast is game. It really leaves a bad taste with a fat-shaming gag at the end though.

The Florida Project (2017) / A

If I had made my list for 2017 a bit later, The Florida Project would maybe have taken the top spot. Incredibly warm, incredibly funny, just incredible. It’s not not a message movie, but in viewing everything through the eyes of children, it finds a sincere, honest, and pure sense of joy anchored in inevitable pain. Moonee and Jancey forever.

 

Ready Player One offers references, not fun

I wouldn’t expect to dislike a big summer movie for its failure to properly consider the democratization of shared online spaces, but welcome to 2018.

When Ready Player One, based on an Ernest Cline novel which apparently everyone but me heard of back in 2011, was announced, the conversation surrounding it seemed to revolve in how it would deal with the toxic culture surrounding gamer fandom after GamerGate. On the surface, Ready Player One has painted an inclusive picture of the community, with enough rah-rah community spirit to feel less like a celebration of geeky lonerism. But its a bit of a smoke screen, as it still relies on its audience getting the references with exactly as much subtlety as an episode of Family Guy. Yes, I get the reference of the Holy Hand Grenade, but its not used in any inventive fashion, and its weirdly distancing for those who, understandably, don’t get the often forty-year old references.*

If the Holy Hand Grenade seems like an easy one, how about a piece of tech which is a complete deus ex machina unless you know the name of the director of Back to the Future? For the most part, Ready Player One doesn’t do anything artful with the references, scattering them as background flavour without really engaging with the material. An extended second-act The Shining riff is the sole exception, which filters the CGI action through a film filter and has actual fun with the setting, as an orc-creature avatar unfamiliar with the source material innocuously calls for the elevator. The ending may give us the Mecha-Godzilla vs. The Iron Giant/Gundam tag-team fight we never asked for, but The Lego Movie and Lego Batman did the whole licensed-materials toybox with a lot more creativity earlier.

But if it barely dodges gatekeeperism on its pop-cultural reverence, it falls face-first into a pile of manure on its reverence for silicon valley tech bros. The movie neatly slots cartoonish corporate green into the villainous role for reasons of ease. Of course no one wants an internet with financial interests at the helm, leaving extra room for ad space and ticking away at your bank account through microtransactions. But the movie posits that the only way to fight bad corporate overlords is to impose benevolent nerdy overlords. Not only is this kinda terrifying, particularly within a month of the Facebook / Cambridge Analytica scandal, but its internally inconsistent. The virtual reality world of The Oasis is portrayed as a wonderful escape, but also one whose penalty for in-world death can be a driver of real-life suicide, and one that has allowed the very corporate baddies that do occupy villainous roles to flourish. Mark Rylance gives a tender performance as the creator of The Oasis, but while his imperfection are admitted, he’s never held to the fire as a responsible party. Society is quickly waking up to the fact that just because you claim to be pro-freedom and pro-democracy doesn’t mean you get a free pass when insidious elements take easy advantage of the structures you provide while you let them line your pockets, and in failing to grapple with this at all, Ready Player One ensures that, in forty years, no one will be making nostalgic references to it.

D+

Ready Player One (2018)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Starring Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendehlsohn, and Mark Rylance
Rotten Tomatoes (75%)

* That being said, if Ready Player One gets one person to watch The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, it will have been worth it.