Action

Ready Player One: For These Teens, It’s Game On or Game Over

Jeremy BeckReviews
Tye Sheridan and Olivia Cooke in Steven Spielberg's "Ready Player One"

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: An intrepid young man, living in a dystopian future, must use his pluck and ingenuity to defeat a powerful villain whose mercenary greed threatens our hero’s livelihood, along with the rest of the planet’s. In so doing, he will assemble a ragtag team of similarly disenfranchised youths, one of whom will catch his eye as a potential love interest, another of whom will support him with weapons and wisecracks. Foes will be vanquished, bonds will be forged, and while setbacks will surely be suffered (tertiary characters may even be killed), in the end, the world will almost certainly be saved.

Ready Player One, the robust and flawed film adaptation of Ernest Cline’s immensely popular book, doesn’t so much follow this familiar script as live inside it. It envisions a universe where the very act of engaging with popular art—mostly playing videogames, but also watching movies and spotting references—becomes the fulcrum of its story. It’s a recursive premise that’s less interesting than it sounds, primarily serving as the excuse for a non-stop parade of pop-culture allusions and winking asides. And perhaps in an alternate dimension—maybe one reached by traveling through some sort of vaguely defined wormhole whose laws are breathlessly explained to us in a bout of foggy exposition—Ready Player One would have been a piece of hackwork that turned out to be a tedious, imitative slog. But in our reality, it’s better than that, because in our reality, it’s been directed by Steven Spielberg. Read More

Read more

Star Wars: The Last Jedi: As a New Hope Emerges, an Old Fight Rages On

Jeremy BeckReviews
Daisy Ridley and Mark Hamill in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"

For all its deafening noise and frantic activity, Star Wars: The Force Awakens concluded with a quiet and surprisingly stirring image: the aspiring Jedi named Rey (Daisy Ridley) tentatively approaching the long-vanished Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill, as if you didn’t already know), reaching out to offer him his cherished lightsaber. It was a tantalizing ending, one that sent Star Wars fans—a sect that, according to the box-office receipts, appears to constitute most of the known world—into a state of delirious anticipation that has persisted for two full years. So it is difficult to exaggerate the audacity with which The Last Jedi, the eighth episode in the Star Wars saga (excluding the standalone Rogue One), chooses to resume this fateful encounter set on the verdant island planet of Ahch-To. Rather than expressing gratitude or even curiosity toward Rey’s arrival, Luke simply accepts the weapon, grimaces, and promptly flings it over a cliff.

This is a hilarious scene, a swift and brutal undercutting of fans’ long-gestating expectations. Yet it also symbolizes the refreshing streak of independence that Rian Johnson, The Last Jedi’s fearless writer and director, has brought to cinema’s most gargantuan franchise. The Force Awakens was a fun and spirited adventure, but it also felt somewhat safe, J.J. Abrams carefully returning the enterprise to the tracks that George Lucas’ (unfairly) maligned prequels so gleefully leapt off. The Last Jedi, by contrast, is a more interesting and exciting movie, flawed in its own ways but charged with genuine unpredictability and risk. In taking the reins from Abrams, Johnson pledges fealty to no one—not even Star Wars fans. Read More

Read more

Atomic Blonde: She’s a Lady, and a Killer

Jeremy BeckReviews
Charlize Theron is cool as ice in "Atomic Blonde"

These boots are made for kicking in Atomic Blonde, David Leitch’s sexy, overstuffed actioner of new-age kineticism and carefully curated retro cool. Forged of tactile black leather and stretching what seems like acres up to their subject’s knee, the boots adorn the statuesque body of Charlize Theron, that South African goddess with a 14-year-old Oscar and a newfound thirst for blood. As a one-armed warrior in Mad Max: Fury Road, Theron showcased a bristling physicality that meshed nicely with her more classical qualities. She has all of her limbs back in Atomic Blonde, and good thing too, since she does roughly as much talking with her fists—and those boots—as with her mouth.

If anything, there’s too much dialogue in Atomic Blonde, which tends to stall whenever its heroine isn’t in slick, liquid motion. Adapting the graphic novel The Coldest City, screenwriter Kurt Johnstad (300—you get what you pay for) piles on the spy-speak and the Bournean intrigue, layering the busy plot with triple agents, double-crosses, and a single ungainly framing device. It isn’t incomprehensible, exactly, but Leitch, who previously co-directed John Wick before departing its sequel to make this film, has little use for all this blather. He’s much more interested in cranking up the music—the post-punk-heavy soundtrack here feels like the offspring of a union between The Americans and Deutschland 83—and unleashing his leading lady as an unstoppable force of lithe, purposeful destruction. Read More

Read more

War for the Planet of the Apes: No More Monkeying Around

Jeremy BeckReviews
Andy Serkis' Caesar is on a mission in "War for the Planet of the Apes"

Columns of soldiers goose-step in perfect rhythm, staring upward with reverence at their messianic leader. Behind them, enslaved prisoners, chained and starving, lug giant blocks of stone, piling them into a towering wall. A flag, emblazoned with religious symbolism, hangs firmly alongside an embankment, like gang colors marking territory. The loudspeakers blare an anthem, and the foot soldiers unleash a thunderous war cry.

You might think, from this bleak and jingoistic description, that I’m discussing a documentary on the Third Reich. But the anthem is “The Star-Spangled Banner”, and the flag is colored red, white, and blue. So when the leader orders his zealots to purge the world of an inferior race, he isn’t just marshaling his troops for battle. He’s putting America first.

Such is the chilling subtext of War for the Planet of the Apes, Matt Reeves’ tense, bracing new saga of conflict and community. As you can gather, the politics on display here are not exactly subtle, even if their allegorical impact may be more acute than intended. (Shooting took place well before the 2016 presidential election.) But while the film’s nationalist rhetoric and iconography may feel distressingly plausible, they are not the movie’s primary draw. No, what makes War for the Planet of the Apes so successful is that it’s a genuinely thrilling action movie, replete with exhilarating combat sequences and grand adventure. Had it been released ten years ago, it would still feel essential, getting both your blood pumping and—in more of a surprise—your tear ducts flowing. Read More

Read more

Alien: Covenant: Still Meddling, Still Dying, but with Double the Robots

Jeremy BeckReviews
Katherine Waterston and Michael Fassbender in "Alien: Covenant"

During one of the best scenes in Alien: Covenant, a robot tells an antiquated model of himself why he was ultimately decommissioned. “You were too human,” the current version bluntly informs his predecessor. “Too idiosyncratic.” The explanation makes sense—the older model’s uncannily lifelike behavior unsettled his mortal masters—but it carries with it an undeniable sting of irony. Covenant, the sixth entry in the Alien franchise and the third directed by Ridley Scott, is a vigorous and impressive piece of mass-market entertainment, a finely calibrated horror film that boasts expert effects work and pulse-pounding set pieces. Yet it is also clearly the product of corporate assembly, a sequel to a prequel that ably perpetuates the series’ mythology but does so with minimal distinction or ingenuity. It’s a bit like that newly updated cyborg who lectures his elder counterpart: sleek and efficient, but not idiosyncratic enough.

Or maybe I’ve just seen too many Alien movies. If you haven’t watched Scott’s classic original (which is slightly overrated, but that’s a different discussion), you are likely to be gobsmacked by the spectacle of violent death and physical suffering that the director has arrayed before you. Setting aside Sigourney Weaver’s spunky and sexy performance, Alien achieved cinematic immortality for two reasons: its historically great tagline, and John Hurt’s upset stomach. Seeing as Covenant cannot hope to match the former (though “The path to paradise begins in hell” isn’t half-bad), it strives to one-up the latter. Throughout this movie, nasty critters burst out from within the insides of unsuspecting human hosts, spilling blood and splintering backbone in the process. Alien enthusiasts may have seen this before, but they likely haven’t seen it this excruciating and visceral. Read More

Read more