2022 Blindspot Pick #12: Children of Men (2006)

Tags

Action, Drama, Sci-fi, Thriller

While most of us were waiting for a whimper or a bang,
The world we knew withdrew instead of ending.
We thought that we would certainly bounce back or boomerang,
And still we watch and wait, uncomprehending.

No more are teens or children even deemed a demographic,
For all are grown with none to take their place.
No crying babies anymore, no more school zone traffic,
And no descendants for a dying race.

It’s funny how the future’s so dependent on the youth
Who’ll live it out and screw it up anew.
Without them, it’s the present that becomes the only truth,
No benefit of retrospect for you.
_____________________________

MPA rating: R (for violence, language, and a childbirth scene)

At long last, we are here at the end of last year’s Blindspots! It’s been like pulling teeth for some reason getting to these overdue reviews, but hopefully I can pick up the pace with new material for the year. Luckily, I ended this 2022 series with a winner. Based on the P.D. James novel, Children of Men is the scariest kind of dystopia, one that feels all too possible within its speculative what-if scenario. Even aspects that may have seemed less immediate in 2006 have taken on an uncomfortable prescience now, from the chaos of illegal immigration to government-sanctioned self-euthanasia.

Instead of some distant nuclear war or technological breakthrough, this world’s disaster is the slow and quiet death of infertility. Since 2009, women can no longer get pregnant, and now in 2027, children are a thing of the past, with hope being further corroded by England’s brutally suppressed influx of refugees. Bureaucrat Theo Faron (Clive Owen) sees little he can do in the face of the crisis until he is drawn into the effort of his activist ex-wife (Julianne Moore) to get a somehow pregnant refugee named Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) to safety.

Director Alfonso Cuaron outdid himself in making Children of Men a gripping and visceral experience. I was bordering on bored during the first twenty minutes, as the extreme despair of Theo’s London is presented, a world fumbling through a tunnel with no light at the end. Yet once the main quest of the plot is established, ferrying Kee out of England to a mysterious organization called the Human Project, it becomes a breathless chase as Theo and his allies must outmaneuver insurgents and government obstacles. Even the less bombastic moments have a suspenseful edge to them, like a “car chase” in which a stalling car rolls downhill with runners in close pursuit. (That actually sounds strangely comical written down, but it’s thrilling in context.) While it was nice seeing the likes of Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Caine, the performances don’t stand out as much as the technical excellence around them, but they build on the plot’s subtext as a modern Nativity story, with Owen’s everyman helping Ashitey’s Marian figure through dangers on all sides.

As I’ve mentioned many times before, I’m a sucker for long scenes with no (or hidden) cuts, which happen to be Cuaron’s specialty. I was familiar with a scene in which a car is assailed by an armed mob, which required an impressive camera rig to swing around the inside of a car with five people in it, but even more impressive was an over-six-minute shot in which Theo weaves through an urban warzone, into and out of a building under heavy fire. It’s hard for anything to top the feature length of 1917, but the sheer audacity of staging and shooting such a sequence has my immense respect and admiration.

Of course, I would have preferred it without the cursing and two brief scenes of nudity, but Children of Men deserves its critical acclaim. I’m honestly surprised that it wasn’t deemed worthy of Oscar nominations for Best Picture or Best Director (it did get a nod for Cinematography and Adapted Screenplay), but it’s not the first time the Academy snubbed a deserving film. I read that the film’s ending was intentionally left open-ended to allow for hope or despair depending on the viewer, and I’m rather glad that I found it hopeful, if bittersweet. It’s not always easy finding that light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s there.

Best line: (Michael Caine’s Jasper) “Everything is a mythical, cosmic battle between faith and chance.”

Rank:  List Runner-Up (close to List-Worthy)

© 2023 S.G. Liput
784 Followers and Counting

2022 Blindspot Pick #11: Grand Canyon (1991)

Tags

Drama

For every moment of suffering,
For every moment of joy,
For every up or down you face,
Another’s felt it in your place.
Another’s felt that same heartache,
That grateful twinge, that give and take,
And you can trust you’re not alone
In every feeling you can’t shake.

Perhaps they’re a hemisphere distant,
Perhaps they are right down the street,
Perhaps you’ve met and couldn’t tell
How similar the parallel
Between the feelings that you share,
The craving dream, the silent prayer.
Perhaps you both look nothing alike,
But what you share is always there.
_________________________

MPA rating: R (mainly for language and brief nudity)

One of fellow blogger MovieRob’s favorite films (thanks for the recommendation), Grand Canyon is the kind of film I usually like, a wide-reaching glimpse into the lives of diverse people and how their individual stories intersect. This sort of ensemble picture can have varying levels of prestige, from the holiday charm of Love Actually to the sober drama of Yi Yi, but it can also go wildly wrong if too many of the stories themselves are uninteresting or off-putting, as with last year’s disappointing Blindspot Short Cuts. Thankfully, Grand Canyon is on the positive side of that spectrum, though there’s a distinct feeling that it’s trying too hard to hammer home its themes.

Advertised as a spiritual successor to writer-director Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill (one of my VC’s favorite movies), the film’s main dynamic is sparked when lawyer Mack (Kevin Kline) narrowly escapes being mugged thanks to the cool-headed tow truck driver Simon (Danny Glover), after which Mack goes out of his way to befriend Simon and help him and his family. Alongside this plot are parallel threads about Mack’s wife (Mary McDonnell) wanting to adopt an abandoned baby she finds and his movie producer friend Davis (Steve Martin) second-guessing the violent content of his films after he is injured in a shooting. Add in the likes of Alfre Woodard, Mary-Louise Parker, and Jeremy Sisto, and you have an outstanding ensemble cast on hand.

On a purely narrative level, Grand Canyon deals with how people react to unexpected changes in their life – a near-death experience, a mid-life crisis, a change in scenery, the blossoming or ending of a love affair. In these aspects, the film excels in its realistic portrayal of different responses. Mack’s scare causes him to reach out and look further in the strata of Los Angeles society than he has before, even if he can’t shake some cluelessness of how his actions affect others. On the other hand, Davis’s change in perspective is short-lived, merely informing his decision to keep up his old habits. The film doesn’t end up giving complete closure to all these disparate threads (the storylines of Parker’s adulterous secretary and Simon’s gang-influenced nephew are dropped without a final resolution), but it is only a snapshot of these turning points, one that captures their dreams and anxieties in a world just as chaotic as it is thirty-two years later.

One can tell the effort that went into Kasdan’s Oscar-nominated screenplay, which is replete with insightful discussions about control and meaning and miracles and existence. And while these are laudable topics, I couldn’t help but think that normal people don’t talk about these universal concepts as casually as they do in this movie. While I appreciated the existential concerns raised (albeit without any religious dimension), the eloquence of it also kept reminding me that this is a script being delivered, quite well of course but not convincingly enough to completely connect with these characters. That could be my own personal gripe that wouldn’t bother other viewers, but it keeps Grand Canyon from being a new favorite ensemble flick. Still, as thoughtful all-star dramas go, it’s a well-made and perceptive piece that uses its particular time and place to ask timeless questions.

Best line: (Davis, to Mack) “That’s part of your problem, you know, you haven’t seen enough movies. All of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.”

Rank: List Runner-Up

© 2023 S.G. Liput
784 Followers and Counting

2022 Blindspot Pick #10: The Frighteners (1996)

Tags

Comedy, Fantasy, Horror, Thriller

If ghosts are really dead and well
And haunting us instead of hell
Or heaven, then it’s fair to ponder
What they’re up to when they wander.

Could it be their lifeless heads
Are in our bathrooms, in our beds,
Next to us when we’re alone
To judge us and what’s on our phone?

Could it be they find their fun
In terrifying everyone?
Just float a chair or whisper “boo,”
And while you scream, they laugh at you.

Or maybe they just do their schtick
Because the dead resent the quick
And all the things they can’t enjoy
And so endeavor to annoy?

Or maybe phantoms leave a trail
Of fear to flout the coffin nail,
To prove to us as well as them
That they exist by their mayhem.

It must be hard to be a ghoul.
To be invisible is cruel.
So next time you are all alone,
Turn to the ghost you might have known
And dare to share a friendly word,
Perhaps their first since being interred.
And if they don’t scare you away,
Just know you might have made their day.
_______________________

MPA rating:  R (for violence, mostly PG-13-level except for one scene)

Yep, I’m still here catching up on my 2022 Blindspots, but I have officially seen them all! So now it’s just getting the reviews out. Though I had intended it for last Halloween, next up is a little horror film with some unlikely bedfellows in director Peter Jackson before he hit the big time with Lord of the Rings and Michael J. Fox in his last starring role, shortly before announcing his Parkinson’s diagnosis. Between Jackson’s penchant for horror comedy (much toned down here) and Fox’s natural charisma, the two proved to be a good mix, finding both humor and pathos in a tale of a con artist who can see dead people and must battle a murderous phantom only he can see.

Fox plays Frank Bannister, a self-proclaimed banisher of ghosts, who gets help in faking the hauntings in a small American town (actually Jackson’s native New Zealand) from his spectral collaborators (Chi McBride, Jim Fyfe, and John Astin). He alone can see ghosts ever since a near-death experience, and after a run-in with a boorish jock (Peter Dobson) and his kinder wife (Trini Alvarado), Frank endeavors to stop a series of sudden random deaths that seem to be caused by the Grim Reaper.

After he’d earned a name through several strictly Kiwi projects of varying taste, The Frighteners was Jackson’s first Hollywood movie, and its mishmash of genres adds to it feeling like a turning-point film, the work of someone still perfecting their talent for mainstream audiences. Despite the twisty plot and colorful performances, it seemed to me that the real intended star was the special effects provided by Weta Digital (now Weta FX) to bring the ghosts to life, particularly the villain whose shape is often seen moving underneath solid surfaces like walls. By today’s standards, those all-CGI moments now have an inescapably dated and unreal look to them, but I can imagine they were a wonder in the mid-1990s.

While Fox’s natural likeability overshadows that of his character, he nails the dramatic moments and the interactions with characters that are not actually there, since all the ghost scenes were shot twice, with and without the ghosts present. As for the antagonists, while the shadowy reaper is a formidable threat, Jeffrey Combs is a scene-stealer as Miles Dammers, the intense FBI agent trying to tie Frank to the killings. Combs was clearly channeling a neurotic Jim Carrey and is a primary source of the film’s humor, which can be hit-and-miss.

Most of the film’s mixed reviews seem to consider it “tonally uneven,” which is true, never going for full-on belly laughs or deep-seated horror. The ending especially forgoes any of the light-hearted campiness in order to make events feel as hopeless as possible for the heroes while also overdoing explanatory flashbacks. Other issues include the rather shallow romance and the fact that the harrowing opening scene doesn’t make much sense in retrospect.

I don’t mean to sound overly negative; I very much enjoyed The Frighteners and actually watched it twice. It’s not high art nor an outright dud, so it’s hard to figure out in which bucket of appreciation to place it. But it’s an entertaining amalgam of influences that deserves its cult following, and I’m grateful that it served as a stepping stone for Jackson and Weta toward The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Besides, you can’t go wrong ending a movie with “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper.”

Best line: (Frank) “You are SUCH an a**hole.”
(Dammers, unhinged) “Yes, I am. I’m an a**hole… with an Uzi.”

Rank:  List Runner-Up

© 2023 S.G. Liput
784 Followers and Counting