Science Fiction

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker: Racing to the End, and Backpedaling from the Middle

Jeremy BeckReviews
The band is together one last time in "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"

Helmets matter in Star Wars. The Walt Disney Company knows this; The Mandalorian, the flagship series of Disney’s new streaming service, begins each episode with a retrofitted logo, a montage of recognizable head coverings from our favorite faraway galaxy. J.J. Abrams knows it too. So when an early scene in The Rise of Skywalker, the ninth and (supposedly) last entry in the Star Wars saga, features Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) donning a re-forged black mask—the same mask that he destroyed in a fit of pique one film ago—it is impossible to miss the metaphor. Every modern franchise production must to some extent honor the loyalty of its patrons, but The Rise of Skywalker exhibits a peculiar brand of fan service. It appears designed to cater not to Star Wars enthusiasts at large, but to the small and vocal sect of devotees who adored the seventh episode, Abrams’ The Force Awakens, yet who simultaneously despised its follow-up, Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi. If Johnson wielded spunk and irreverence to blow the franchise template to bits, Abrams deploys nostalgia and traditionalism to put the pieces back together.

This is not all too easy. Just as that reconstructed helmet still shows visible cracks, The Rise of Skywalker is a seamy and uneven movie, laboring to bring the saga to a stirring close while also frantically course-correcting toward a more conventional version of the Star Wars mythos. Rather than boldly exploring new worlds (whoops, sorry, wrong franchise), it retreats inward, taking refuge in the safe and familiar. This is disappointing, but it is far from devastating. Abrams’ narrative choices may border on cowardly, but he remains a skillful supplier of big-budget imagery and exciting conflict. That he lacks Johnson’s daring and imagination has not precluded him from making another boisterous adventure, with moments of glorious spectacle. Read More

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Ad Astra: Distant Papa, Can You Hear Me?

Jeremy BeckReviews
Brad Pitt in "Ad Astra"

Early in Ad Astra, James Gray’s searching, often astonishing, deeply frustrating new film, a man finds himself sitting alone at a kitchen table. A woman, whom we presume to be his wife, enters the background of the frame and starts to walk into an adjoining room, then stops and tilts her head to look at her husband. At this point, most directors would pull focus from the man to the woman, allowing us to discern her expression, be it pensive, affectionate, or disapproving. Gray, however, keeps his camera trained on the man in the foreground, watching his impassive features as he remains still, refusing to turn and look at his spouse. The woman leaves the room as she arrived, a blurred outline: hazy, indefinite, unknowable.

In terms of plot, this is one of Ad Astra’s least essential scenes. But it’s still a revealing moment, demonstrating both its director’s purposeful technique and his thematic and visual priorities. The man at the table isn’t just the movie’s main character but our sole point of entry. He appears in every scene of the film and conveys its lofty ideas, whether through his wistful demeanor or via one of his numerous, egregiously unnecessary voiceovers; here, he informs us that he is focused on his mission to the exclusion of all else. Yet while Ad Astra aspires to be both a bold adventure and a poignant character study—a somber interstellar epic that explores the mysteries of the universe by way of one man’s scarred psyche—its more accurate embodiment is the blurred outline of that faceless woman. With his customary craft, Gray has made a sweeping study of humanity that, despite its strenuous efforts, never feels especially humane. Read More

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High Life: Entering the Void, High-Strung and Horny

Jeremy BeckReviews
Robert Pattinson in Claire Denis's "High Life".

The spaceship has a garden. Somewhere, amid the instrument panels and the spartan bunks and the anti-gravity suits, there is a verdant room full of plants, moss, and dirt. It’s as if the astronauts, saddened by the prospect of leaving Earth behind, insisted on bringing a bit of earth along with them.

This contrast—between the personal and the fantastical, between presence and absence, between flowering life and merciless death—is emblematic of High Life, Claire Denis’ strange, frustrating, beguiling new film. Part sci-fi thriller, part philosophical meditation, it is always challenging, often boring, and occasionally mesmerizing. Read More

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The Predator: They Don’t Come in Peace. Neither Do the Aliens.

Jeremy BeckReviews
Olivia Munn and Boyd Holbrook in "The Predator"

The eponymous monster of The Predator is very good at one thing, and it’s killing people. Shane Black, the director and co-writer of The Predator, is also very good at one thing, and it’s writing smart, quippy dialogue. But where the Predator is single-minded in its focus—it kills with precision and without mercy—Black is less committed to channeling his energies into his strengths. He’s great with words, but he also loves mayhem, and after appearing as an actor in the original Predator in 1987, he’s clearly overjoyed at the opportunity to take ownership of this franchise as it continues to slice limbs and spill blood. It’s hard to blame him for following his heart, but his ambition can’t match his execution, because as gifted as Black is with masculine banter, he is not an especially skilled director of action.

This is a problem, because The Predator, for all its verbal wit, is an action movie. It is constructed as a series of explosive set pieces, with periodic interruptions for bouts of exposition and exchanges of vulgar, good-natured ribbing. It’s a reliable formula that Black helped create—he penned a number of big-budget screenplays in the ’80s and ’90s, including Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, and The Long Kiss Goodnight—though where his earlier scripts tended to be complex to the point of indecipherability, this one (co-written by his old collaborator Fred Dekker) is blunt and purposeful. There’s a murderous alien on the loose in suburbia. A cadre of shady bureaucrats want to capture it, a band of hardy soldiers want to kill it, and a few hapless innocents—embodied by an exasperated biologist (Olivia Munn) and a 10-year-old autistic boy (Jacob Tremblay)—find themselves caught in the crossfire. Read More

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Annihilation: Sights to See, But Beware of Monsters, and Humans

Jeremy BeckReviews
Natalie Portman & Co. head into the unknown in "Annihilation"

It’s called “the Shimmer”. A kind of holographic hemisphere, it is a translucent dome of shape-shifting light and iridescent color, steadily encroaching across an unspecified swath of lightly forested land. Nobody knows where it came from, and nobody knows what it is or why it exists. All anyone knows is that once you step inside it, you never come out.

This is the tantalizing setup of Annihilation, Alex Garland’s consistently stunning, occasionally baffling thriller. A film of beguiling beauty and nightmarish horror, it is first and foremost the product of an auteur with a distinctive vision. In Ex Machina, Garland showcased a talent for taking recognizable cinematic patterns and twisting them into distorted shapes that bled with a disquieting intensity. Here, he makes that metaphorical gift literal; in Annihilation, bodies mangle and mutate, contorting into indescribable forms that blur traditional lines—between flora and fauna, between human and animal, between earthly and otherworldly. Yet it’s all so gorgeously done that it presents an intriguing contradiction. Rarely has a movie simultaneously seemed so lovely and so demented. Read More

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