Ex Machina: Of Gods and Men, and Their Beautiful Machines

Jeremy BeckReviews
Domhnall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac in Alex Garland's "Ex Machina"

“Deus ex machina,” the literary term used to describe the contrived resolution of a complicated plot, translates as “God from the machine”. You might think, given that the title of Alex Garland’s arresting, deeply promising directorial debut is merely Ex Machina (sans “deus”), that there are no gods to be found here, only hubristic men and their miraculous machines. You’d be right, but only from a literal perspective. The two characters at the center of Ex Machina may be men, but they act like gods (one even proclaims himself as such), and while they play different parts—one fancies himself the benevolent savior, the other the impassive creator—they each seek to manipulate the fates of others. They soon learn that playing God comes with a cost.

Of course, they themselves are behaving at the whim of their own maker. Every director is the god of his own movie, and Garland hurls a Zeus-like thunderbolt in the film’s very first scene. His camera opens with a close-up of Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson, nicely cast and effectively blank), with rivulets of electronic-blue light dancing across his face as though constructing a topographical map. An email with the subject “Staff lottery: WINNER” flashes across his computer screen, his cell phone blows up with congratulatory messages, and then without a word he’s off, flying via helicopter over the frigid lands of Norway. Garland conveys a reel’s worth of exposition in a few silent seconds, and this extraordinary economy demonstrates that Ex Machina isn’t interested in second place. It wants to be great, and it mostly is. Read More

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While We’re Young: Growing Older, But Not Growing Up

Jeremy BeckReviews
Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts start in Noah Baumbach's "While We're Young"

The obvious irony of the title While We’re Young is that it’s a movie singularly fixated on the fear of growing old. Its hero is Josh (Ben Stiller), a fortyish documentary filmmaker who lives a life of relative comfort in New York City but is nevertheless plagued with anxiety, about both the specific utility of his work and his general place in the world. In other words, Josh is a lot like Noah Baumbach, the forty-five-year-old director of this bewitching, frustrating film. Like Josh, While We’re Young is smart, and it posits a number of interesting and worthwhile ideas. And, like Josh, it cannot entirely escape the nagging feeling that it’s just running in place, waiting for something to shake it out of its complacency.

In Baumbach’s recent movies, that something has taken the form of Greta Gerwig, the fearless and funny actress whose luminous, achingly vulnerable performance elevated Frances Ha from a crisply amusing cringe comedy into a startlingly humane coming-of-age story. Before that, Gerwig poured her heart into Greenberg, playing opposite Stiller, who delivered a career-best turn as a prickly and altogether unpleasant neurotic. Sadly, Gerwig is absent this time around, while Stiller reverts to his bland, inoffensive screen presence. His lead performance here isn’t bad so much as polite; an established star, he can coast on familiarity and charm, graciously ceding the spotlight to other, hungrier actors. In While We’re Young, he makes room for the magnetic Adam Driver, who plays Jamie, a boisterous aspiring documentarian who seems to idolize Josh. Read More

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’71: Behind Blurred Enemy Lines

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jack O'Connell runs for his life in "'71"

There is scarcely a glimpse of true color to be seen in ’71, apart from the occasional piercing pop of Jack O’Connell’s sky-blue eyes. Yann Demange’s fumbling, gripping tale of a soldier trapped behind enemy lines, it takes place in a washed-out landscape of grimy greys, dirty browns, and burnt-out fire-orange. Unfortunately, that sense of abiding murkiness extends to Gregory Burke’s screenplay, which assembles a motley bunch of Irish gangsters and does little to differentiate them. But even if ’71‘s storytelling is muddled, its execution is consistently riveting. Directing his first feature, Demange has made a pulse-pounding thriller that demonstrates a bone-deep understanding of filmmaking suspense. It’s scary to think of what he could do with a more attentive script.

The latter two-thirds of ’71 are imbued with a feverish, exhausting tension, but it begins as something far different: a touchingly humane platoon picture. O’Connell stars as Gary Hook, a young private in the British Army who’s going through the usual grueling training regimen, running great distances with a rifle slung across his back before crawling through the mud. But his commanding officers, rather than peppering him with the typical accusations of worthlessness (think Full Metal Jacket), preach loudly and encouragingly about the virtues of teamwork. “Help each other!” one CO barks as Hook and his comrades attempt to scale a mock wall. It’s a seemingly straightforward command that ’71, as it descends deeper into desperation, distorts and refracts with chilling ambiguity. Read More

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Insurgent: What’s in the Box? It’s the “Divergent” Sequel, Dressed Up and Crashing Down

Jeremy BeckReviews
Shailene Woodley stars in "Insurgent"

When did young-adult movies become so childish? Look, it makes perfect sense that adaptations of YA fiction have experienced a boom at the multiplex. Teenagers go to the movies in droves, and so studios are constantly scrounging for the next mega-franchise, hoping to transform fantastical allegories into real profits. And when done right—as in the Harry Potter movies (the subgenre’s preeminent jewel) and, to a lesser extent, the Hunger Games films— these properties can be artistically valuable as well as commercially successful. The problem with Insurgent, the second installment in the Divergent series (based on a trio of novels by Veronica Roth), isn’t that it’s set in another futuristic dystopia or that it’s populated primarily by blandly attractive adolescents. The problem is that it’s dumb.

Part of my issue with Insurgent may be that I’ve never read any of Roth’s novels. Perhaps if I were familiar with the source material, I’d be more responsive to the gibberish about “Abnegation” and “factionless” and “sims”. But I tend to doubt it, and besides, it’s the job of the screenwriter (or screenwriters, in this case, as the script is credited to Brian Duffield, Akiva Goldsman, and Mark Bomback) to translate a novel’s prose into the language of cinema. Here, the more the characters blather about the five factions (and the so-called Divergents who transcend their boundaries), the more infantile the whole thing seems. Worse, where Divergent at least indulged in some opportunities for dopey entertainment—like a nighttime game of “Capture the Flag”, or a pedagogical knife-throwing session—Insurgent is aggressively dour, with a false sense of solemnity that stifles the storytelling. If you can’t make your hapless tale of boilerplate heroism smart, at least make it fun. Read More

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It Follows: Getting Off to Pass It On

Jeremy BeckReviews
Maika Monroe is stalked by Death in "It Follows"

It is so easy to make a bad horror movie, and so hard to make a good one. Any filmmaker can momentarily shock audiences with a monster bursting from the closet or a killer slashing from the shadows. But It Follows, David Robert Mitchell’s tense, terrifying second feature, is a master class in horror precisely because of what it doesn’t do. It doesn’t simply rely on a familiar pattern of “Boo!” moments, punctuating moments of dark silence with sudden screams. Instead, it develops a sustained, unrelenting sense of dread, building on its clever premise in smart and tantalizing ways. It chokes you with fear, but it never cheats.

It also serves as a showcase for Mitchell’s undeniable craft. His formal command is evident right from the film’s killer opening sequence, in which a teenage girl, Annie (Bailey Spry), bursts from her house in the twilight hours, wearing heels and looking panicked. She stumbles along the street as her neighbors inquire concernedly, and Mitchell’s camera begins a slow 360-degree turn, eventually relocating Annie as she hightails it in her car, with the soundtrack (by electronica outfit Disasterpeace, aka Rich Vreeland) blaring synths ominously. The following morning, Annie is lying dead on the beach, her bloodied body mangled at an awkward angle, and it’s clear that death is stalking this nondescript Detroit suburb. Read More

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