KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where each week I have a spotlight movie (or two) which I write a longer, thinkier piece (or two) about, and then whatever else I watched that week (or three weeks ago) I do a quick little summary of my thoughts.
This week:
The Creator (2023, d. Gareth Edwards - in theatre)
Pain Hustlers (2023, d. David Yates - Netflix)
The Vanishing (aka Spoorloos, 1988, d. George Sluizer - Criterion Channel)
Nightmare Alley (1947, d. Edmund Goulding - Criterion Channel)
Last Sentinel (2023, d. Tanel Toon - Tubi)
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It may not be very clean in its character work nor perfect in storytelling execution, but The Creator is so successful in its world building, which is like catnip for myself and one Mr. Toast. On top of this it tells a very different tale about the fears of A.I., and plays out a heavily anti-warmongering message.
On the latter, it's really not a hot take for a film to make a stand against genocide, but it certainly plays with much more relevance in light of recent world events where the so-called "good guys" are supporting the vindictive brutalizing a society, what seems, at least in part, political posturing and keeping the war coffers stocked.
In The Creator the Americans have never looked so bad for doing what they do so well.
Ok. That's not true. They've certainly looked worse. Like on the news. Every day.
Is The Creator anti-American? In the sense that it portrays future America as a reactionary, militarized, violent, righteous, xenophobic nation with no sense of well-being for anything but their own self-interest then, yeah, it's anti-American. But American audiences should be able to put some distance between themselves and this movie because it's anti-future-American... and not representative of the America of now at all, right?
Director Edwards has crafted an exceptional show-don't-tell film in building his world of 2065. He never lingers on his tech or environments, the camera is a participant in this world, not a tourist. It's a propulsive film that doesn't take many moments to explain thing to the audience, and I think for any of its story or characterization flaws, Edwards could put on a masterclass in how to make a world feel alive and lived in.
It's a stunning looking film as well. From Monster to Godzilla to Rogue One, Edwards has proven his aptitude for not just efficient effects use but also using effects to highlight scale, David vs. Goliath. Here the might of the U.S. anti-AI military have weapons that dramatically outsize and overpower its enemy in frightening, upsetting and extreme ways. In the wrong hands this "cool weaponry" would be all very glorified and revelled in, even if it's ostensibly in the bad guys hands. But it always feels brutal, callous, unnecessary, and, frankly, overcompensating, especially as the events of the film take place in "New Asia" and The Americans are just imposing their will upon a foreign territory and its people.
The AIs of the world of The Creator have sentience and -- despite what the Americans of the film would have you believe-- true emotions. The allegory of homo sapiens brutalizing the cro-magnon man into extinction is just another story that an insecure group of powerful people use to justify their horrendous crusade. In this film, the optimistic truth is that, yes, AIs are the next step in evolution, but not as a weaponized, militarized, world-dominating society, but instead one of radical empathy and compassion the likes of which humanity can seemingly never achieve. We live in the darkness with our heads stuck so far up our own asses. AIs are enlightened beings... without being annoying about it.
The trailer set up what looked to be "the doubting soldier changes his tune when he's charged with protecting a child". It's that story, but mercifully not that simple, and there are more than a few surprise curveballs in what I half expected to be a run-the-gauntlet plot.
It's a visually stunning, exciting, and occasionally gut punching movie that, yes, is very murky in its main story, but everything surrounding it is so damn good, it doesn't seem to matter.
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Maybe it's just where I am as a consumer of content, but I honestly would have rather watched a 90-minute youtube long-form essayist dissect the real-life story of this than watch a dramatization, and that pretty much goes for most of these "ripped from recent headlines" movie and tv shows.
Random 3: (1) The accent work certainly makes itself known. (2) Emily Blunt ably carries this thing. (3) When does Hollywood's favourite daughter, Chloe Coleman (has anyone ever had such a plethora of high-wattage moms and dads), get to breakout into a starring role?
Passably entertaining and engaging.
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In brief, the film is about a Dutch woman, Saskia, who goes missing in France right in front of her partner Max's eyes. It's about Max who, three years later, still obsessively searches for her. And it's about the man, Lemorne, who took the woman, how, and why.
It's an exceptionally deliberate film, in the way it does out information, cutting between perspectives, on a fractured timeline. It plays with the audience's sense of reasoning, portraying Max as a bit of an hot-headed, tempermental asshole, and yet what we see of Lemorne's life is of a family man, a chemistry professor, and, even at one moment, a hero. But Sluizer lets us in on Lemorne's inner life, his sociopathic reasoning into why he does what he does. He's not a compulsive serial killer, but he's also immune to the impact of emotional reasoning.
I can see in The Vanishing a lot of influence into Bryan Fuller's Hannibal TV series, particularly the relationship between Will and Hannibal seems cut from Max and Lemorne. Visually, even stylistically, the Vanishing shares ground with Twin Peaks. Bill Hader even cites the film when talking about building his character in Barry. It's one of those films that just seems to have crept its way into so much of what I've watched over the years that it seemed immediately familiar, though I've never seen it before.
It was remade in 1993 with Keifer Sutherland and Jeff Bridges, if you're thinking it may be familiar somehow....
But is it horror? Nope.
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Guillermo Del Toro's Nightmare Alley is a film I really, truly didn't like. I though it was a gorgeous production but of a story that just felt pointless. I had heard, from back when GDT's version was released, that the original 1948 Nightmare Alley was the superior film.
It's not.
What utterly surprised me was how the two films were pretty much beat-by-beat the same story, with miniscule differences, such as, in the classic, Tyrone Power's Stan is maybe not as bad, or as ambitious as Bradley Cooper's iteration, but, in the end, it doesn't matter, the effect is still the same. He's pretty unlikeable.
As I watched the classic, realizing that, sure, it was probably really exciting in its day, the era of carnivals not far gone from memory, and the idea of mentallists still probably one of intrigue to the naive, it just made me wonder what Del Toro thought he could do with it to have any relevance to a modern audience, especially hewing so close to the original's story. The only thing I could think of was that the 1948 film opens with Stan being very, very curious about the Geek, the poor soused bum who's so desperate and down-and-out he's willing to bite the heads off of live chickens at the carnival. It's a point hit so hard early on that it's a downright shocker when Stan is rescued, just in the nick of time, from such a fate, because it seems so telegraphed. In Del Toro's version, that's the twist, and is seems to me, in hindsight, the only impetus he had for remaking the film.
I was actively engaged with Del Toro's version, even though I wasn't really liking it most of its run time. At least it was pretty. I was passively engaged with this Goulding version, and found myself even more frustrated with it being unable to stop comparing it to Del Toro's. What it comes right down to is I don't like the story. It doesn't interest me, the characters don't interest me, and whatever it's trying to say, it doesn't really seem important. I could see there being a condemnation of greed or substance abuse, but it's not really interested in exploring them, and its conceit of "what drives a man to such extremes" is a tale far too labyrinthine and unbelievable to be cautionary.
But is it horror? no, it's noir.
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Overlong and undercooked, and feeling very much like a COVID-era production, Last Sentinel hits every expected beat and offers little in the way of surprises. It opts for multiple points of dramatic peril early on and the fatigue for it sets in quickly.
It looks pretty good overall, with a solid location providing convincing sets , some good tech designs, and some impressive digital shots of storms and mega waves that (though the still water effects are far less realistic).
I'm not sure the film sells its 40-years-in-the-future reality convincingly. That there's both such little landmass left, and how the competing accents on board the station could come all from one continent seems a bit confounding.
It should have felt like survival was more dire, and that tensions should have been higher given the situation (either that or the crew should have been much closer knit than they were).
The introduced element of conflict is an unmanned boat and whether to abandon their post or remain. It's decent conflict but only sustains for about a quarter of the film. I would have much preferred a survivor on that boat and questions about allegiances.
The acting is good (Martin McCann and Thomas Kretschmann are highlights, immensely solid character actors with "hey, that guy" faces) and the film is certainly watchable, but it didn't deliver enough on its intriguing premise.
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