We Agree: Fast Color & Prospect

2018, Julia Hart (Miss Stevens) -- Digital Rental
2018, Christopher Caldwell, Zeek Earl (the short Prospect) -- Netflix

When this blog was created, Kent(!) and I intended on seeing lots of movies together and picking them apart as we caught the TTC back. Alas, life. But last Saturday night, we pulled an idea out of our collective sofa sitting TV watching asses (his, when he gets a rare free few hours; me, well most often there) and watched some movies together. Like, together, in person, IRL !

I wanted him to watch Prospect and he chose, after charmingly over-thinking it, Fast Color. I heartily agreed as I had entirely forgotten it was on my watch-list, or more accurately, I forgot to keep an eye open for it. Also, Gugu Mbatha-Raw(r).

I thoroughly enjoyed the second watch of Prospect, which I knew I would, especially being able to share. I also am on a space kick, as I atmosphere dive into the latest major update to (much maligned but redeeming itself) video game No Man's Sky. Seventy-five percent of that game is landing on new planets, usually toxic to you, to mine their resources. And you have to spend the entire game inside your space suit hoping the toxins don't seep in.

Again, as Kent outlined, I was enraptured by the Much Bigger World at play here: the mish-mash of clunky tech, the enigmatic biological commodity, the period speak at play, which, that night, made me think of Firefly but after beginning our ReWatch of Deadwood, I feel is just a trope of the Shakespearean Old West, eloquent yet colloquial. So much is not explained in this movie, yet has such depths.

And from the pollen saturated air & rainforest of that nameless moon we travelled to the parched mid-west of America, 8 years after the last raindrop fell. Ruth is running from something, having kicked her way out of what looked like an abandoned warehouse and escaping into the night. She had been held against her will, but why and by who, we never really find out. But it had not been pleasant. In this PoAp world, it hasn't all fallen apart, but the US obviously hasn't bounced back from the drought. Shop shelves are near empty, water prices are crazy and signs are everywhere about the penalties for wasting water.

Ruth is on her way... home. She obviously left under dire circumstances, probably a situation or a familial conflict or all of the above. Her memories are flooded with broken water pipes and tragedy. And then there is that night in the hotel, when her trauma and emotions get to her and she goes ballistic. Ruth has some psychokinetic condition which she obviously cannot control, which displays as a massive earthquake on fault lines that shouldn't have such. Obviously whoever had her captive wanted to exploit this.

Ruth arrives home to an abandoned daughter (eight or nine) and a not-angry but challenged mother. Bo and Lila live together in this old farmhouse, no signs of income but obviously this is the place they rarely leave, maybe a few trips a month to town for whatever provisions they can buy. This struck me as a world just resigning itself to decay, not really science-ing the shit out of the issue and recovering. The family seems resigned to hiding out, as it turns out the condition is familial, albeit exhibiting much less dangerously than Ruth. The family has always been able to take things apart, molecularly, leaving them as dust. And then, as easy as that, reassemble it. Whatever happened to Ruth left her powers damaged and lacking the ability to control them. It left Ruth damaged, where she fell into drugs and infamy. Thus the rift between she and her mom.

What I really like about this movie is that it is such a small genre story. You know I have gone on and on about Small. This is not (yet; who knows what the impending TV show will bring) about a big world of people with powers hiding from the government. But obviously, if you talk about a single family having a singular (magic/mutant) power, there is something going on here. But its more about the family condition, the conflict and the resolution. And I cannot help but mention, but it's a black (African American, if you need clarification) movie. And black science-fiction or genre is rare on TV and in movies. And it needs not to be. The movie is not about being black, nor does it dispense or deny it. That is how pop culture needs to continue expanding.

How does the movie resolve? Painfully, gratefully and with no small amount of anguish. Genre always does best when it swims with emotions and connections. We are given an explanation of the broken world, connecting it ever so tragically with a broken soul. And then it is resolved, but not without sacrifice. But I cannot end my talk of the movie without going on about the performances. Gugu and Lorraine Toussaint are as spectacular as expected, but Saniyya Sidney is going to be around for a while. And I loved the insertion of David Strathairn as the inserted father figure and local heroic Sheriff, without needing to make him the central character. All around good.

Also, only one poster for Fast Color?!?!? What's up with that?

3 Short Paragraphs: Sicario

2015, Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners) -- digital rental

Now, having seen all of Villeneuve's Hollywood endeavours, I can comfortably say I am a fan. Time to push back catalogs and see his French movies. But are there back catalogs anymore? This was my first official, legal digital rental. Having recently upgraded my Internet, I plugged in a credit card and "rented" this title in HD from my PS3. I had been waiting because I knew it to be an English language movie with Spanish spoken. Pirates tend to have all sub-titles or none. Finding a good English-only is a challenge, especially in today's world where the seas are losing their pirate ships. It was a proven success, but still begs the question --- how far back can I find movies? Are the days of flipping through the VHS/DVD boxes saying "saw it saw it saw it sucks saw it saw it" gone? Or is that what Netflix is for? We shall have to see.

This movie takes place in the same America-Mexico border crossing as the American version of The Bridge, Ciudad Juárez and El Paso. The plot & setting are a microscope on the current era of the Drug War, the one where Mexican drug lords kill their enemies in the hundreds, often dismembering corpses and hanging them for everyone to see. Emily Blunt is a doorkicker, a dedicated FBI agent working against the cartels in Arizona, but not really accomplishing much in the bigger picture. But her success drags her into the world of spook Josh Brolin. He has a goal and needs dedicated soldiers. He's not clear of what he needs her for, but it is going to be nefarious. Walking beside Brolin is Benicio Del Toro, an enforcer for the Columbia cartel(s). As the movie is called Sicario (assassin) you can easily guess what Benicio is and what Brolin's goal is.

We walk the plot of this movie beside Blunt, never seeing the full story of things but still tagging along to see where it goes. Oh, she has an idea that things are going to be nasty, from  the introduction to the world during a border crossing to retrieve a cartel member from Mexican authorities, but she is not exactly sure how far Brolin will go. Everything is nail bitingly tense. In most of these movies, the characterization happens in the rushed parts between the action sequences, but in a Villeneuve movie the action sequences are that which glue the characters together. In the end, we are left standing dazed as a single scenario in this vast epic that is the Drug War has passed us by, leaving us wondering what was the point of it all and what kind of creature do we need to be, to see all of it.