Director: Grant Sputore
Writers: Michael Lloyd Green
Network: Netflix
This is definitely one of the better Netflix originals, after the disappointment of both Titan and Mute. It's kind of a reverse Ex Machina, in which the humans have to convince a robot of their humanity.
An android calling itself ‘Mother’ raises a lone girl (Clara Rugaard) in an underground bunker after an apocalypse wipes out the rest of humanity. Their relationship is tested when a woman (Hilary Swank) appears at the bunker door, with her own version of what is happening.
An android calling itself ‘Mother’ raises a lone girl (Clara Rugaard) in an underground bunker after an apocalypse wipes out the rest of humanity. Their relationship is tested when a woman (Hilary Swank) appears at the bunker door, with her own version of what is happening.
The first 2/3 were pretty tight, a bit like Cloverfield Lane, where the two main characters are shut in a box and you don’t know what’s going on in the outside world or who is telling the truth. The movie makes great use of its claustrophobic sets and the revelations unfold in interesting ways, especially once Swank’s character makes an appearance. The last 1/3 are kind of opaque though—the Daughter’s thinking in particular needed to be clearer, or better explained. As it is, her motivations appear to change two or three times without giving us a sense of why.
It’s an exercise in ethics, where in an early scene we see Mother giving the Daughter a class on morality, asking whether it is more ethical to save one healthy patient, or let them die so their organs might be used to save a number of others. This hypothetical scenario then plays out in real life, with the Daughter asked to choose between selfishness and utilitarianism.
Only ... the ‘selfish’ choice presented to the Daughter is fairly awful, and once the reality of the situation becomes clear, then there’s really no dilemma at all.
Still, a well-made and thought-provoking little film, and a step in the right direction for Netflix’s SF offerings.
Title: The Nice Guys
Director: Shane Black
Writers: Shan Black and Anthony Bagarozzi
This movie is sporadically hilarious, but tonally all over the fucking map, flipping from slapstick farce to buddy comedy to heartwarming family drama to black comedy and back to farce again. The plot is overly complex and, frankly, kind of beside the point, but anyway two private investigators in 1970s Hollywood try to track down a missing girl who has become embroiled in a conspiracy involving catalytic converters. Yeah, it’s a little odd. But really it’s just an excuse for the two stars to have some gonzo fun.
Ryan Gosling is fantastic as bumbling private eye Holland March, and Russell Crowe looks like he got real comfortable to play muscle-for-hire Jackson Healy, and you get the feeling these two had a blast performing together, but nothing really sticks with you because the movie changes gears every five minutes and kind of throws you around in your seat.
Fun to watch, but really nothing more than that.
Title: Drive
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Writer: Hossein Amini (based on a book by James Sallis)
I’d watched Refn’s “Valhalla Rising” (the world's only 9-hour Viking movie with no dialog) and was expecting something slow-moving and arty, but this movie still managed to surprise me.
Like a piece of orchestral music, it’s got these quiet, idyllic parts that suddenly explode into action—the nameless Driver (Ryan Gosling) sits idly on a motel bed, before a window shatters in a slow-mo shotgun blast, and then we leap into furious violence—later the Driver and his neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan) share a lingering, golden-lit kiss in an elevator, before the Driver turns around and stomps the head of another man into the ground, killing him.
Gosling is a bit one-note in this movie, essentially playing a preview of his character from Blade Runner 2049: monosyllabic, vulnerable yet tough superman. The bit part characters are more interesting: Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston as a shady garage owner, Ron Perlman as a brutal gangster, Oscar Isaac as an ex-con.
My only complaint with this movie is the sound mix—the soundtrack is blaringly loud, the conversations mumbled and muted.
