Tag Archives: #humanoid

Morgan

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'Morgan' movie poster

Release: Friday, September 2, 2016

[Theater]

Written by: Seth W. Owen

Directed by: Luke Scott

No movie, especially one dabbling in the science fiction genre, has an obligation to make the viewer feel all warm and cuddly inside. You can be both the coldhearted bastard and The Year’s Best Movie, but if you plan on being as brutally dispassionate as this year’s attempt at Ex Machina-ing the AI subgenre back to life, you better have something interesting to say.

Morgan‘s got nothing. What it does have though are 90 of the most unpleasant, uninteresting minutes I’ve spent at the movies this year.

There were only four of us in my 3:45 screening and the film played out as though it were anticipating as much. You might attribute the film’s disinterest in engaging the viewer to Scott W. Owen’s thoroughly unoriginal screenplay, a story about the dark side of cutting-edge science so bland you sit there realizing that you’re thinking about how bland it is. Annoyingly that meta thought begets another. And then another, and soon enough, twenty minutes have gone by and still nothing’s happened. Oh, look. Time to refill the coke and popcorn. (Spoiler alert: do it in the first 45 minutes because you won’t miss a thing.)

Unfortunately though it’s a real team effort, as the son of the great Ridley Scott doesn’t steer the project in any meaningful direction with an uninspired vision that substitutes substantive scientific and/or philosophical questioning for grisly and pretty cruel action sequences. There are so many questions. What makes Morgan special? Why should we believe she’s the AI creation of the cinematic year? What is her true potential, what is her purpose? Can she really be controlled? Should she be? And the million dollar one: why should we care, about her or this world she inhabits?

If foreshadowing doesn’t destroy Morgan‘s shot at profundity, then it’s a lack of depth and substance. There’s no extrapolation as to what this says about where we are in society, only easy answers — solutions tailor-made for this specific narrative. All the bloody hand-to-hand combat reserved for the ending is an overt solution to the problems introduced in this dreary, monochromatic world. What makes Morgan special? This karate chop! That crazy look in her eyes. (It sure isn’t that fucking boring hoodie.) Why should we believe she’s the year’s coolest AI creation? Because she’s a murderer, with a lust for blood not seen since Ted Bundy. What is her true potential? To be more Ted Bundy than Ted Bundy. Why should we care? Um . . .

The story takes a more political/business approach to the world of scientific endeavors, one of its few distinctive features. Morgan focuses on the tension between a corporate entity seeking total control and the idealistic virtues of those working directly on the company-funded Morgan Project. It pits Kate Mara‘s supremely unfriendly risk manager Lee Weathers against the strangely more sociable project overseers, a group that includes doctors Simon Ziegler (Toby Jones), husband-and-wife duo Darren and Brenda Finch (Chris Sullivan and Vinette Robinson), Amy Menser (Rose Leslie), and Lui Cheng (Michelle Yeoh). After an incident in which Morgan attacked another scientist, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh in the second role this year that has required her to cover her face in physical-abuse make-up, Lee is called in to assess whether the project is one still worth pursuing or if it needs to be terminated.

Mara may not look the part, but she kind of does feel like The Terminator, and Leigh’s bedridden scientist even calls her “a goddamn assassin.” She’s here on business and won’t leave until that’s finished. From the moment she appears Mara delivers each of her lines in the same monotone, several inflections away from sounding like a real person. It’s actually a pretty terrible performance from a reliable thesp. (But not as terrible as the ending.) Corporate red tape wears out its welcome quickly with Ziegler and his colleagues. Perpetually on the defensive, the team continues trying to justify Morgan’s sudden outburst as anomalous. Morgan describes it as “an error.” Nonetheless, a psychiatrist is brought in for an evaluation. It’s Paul Giamatti, so at least you know what you’re going to get out of him. And he surely delivers, pushing Morgan to the limits as he questions why she thinks she is alive. Why she thinks the people around her are her friends.

Judged through a tedious first section and an even slower second act, Morgan isn’t very eventful but it’s well-crafted. A reasonable amount of tension is generated from our ignorance to what Morgan is capable of doing or what she is actually going to do to her captors once she gets loose. (An event we await with bated breaths.) Mara is a constant bummer but the rest of the characters are fairly likable in their restricted capacities. Anya Taylor-Joy (the break-out star from this year’s The Witch) is for some time empathetic and her distinctive features make for a suitable alien-like presence. Boyd Holbrook plays a hunk with serious culinary skills. Because we needed that for levity, I guess, but I’ll take it if everyone else is just going to be a misery to be around.

But when we’re exposed to what the filmmakers have in store for us having waded through a lot of nothingness, the wheels fall right off the wagon, spectacularly. Who had M. Night Shyamalan on speed dial for that big reveal? It has his fingerprints all over it. In fact his sense of atmosphere and ability to maintain tension makes it feel like Morgan doesn’t have any Scott blood running in its veins at all. Slavishly adhering to structure and with no personality of its own, this Ex Machina wannabe has been conditioned to not think for itself.

Recommendation: Slow, unoriginal and featuring an uneasy mix of cerebral meditation and shocking violence, Morgan gives me too many reasons to call this just a total freaking mess. As I personally wasn’t hugely anticipating it, calling it a disappointment might be a stretch but it certainly is disappointING that good actors and a reliable premise, granted a thoroughly worn out one at this point, aren’t enough to bring it around. Film also finishes on one of the lamest notes I have seen since Now You See Me, so unless you’re willing to risk leaving a movie wondering why you even bothered, I’d have to say keep a respectable distance from this one.

Rated: R

Running Time: 92 mins.

Quoted: “There was joy in her heart, before we shoved her back into that box.”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.screenrant.com; http://www.foxmovies.com 

I Origins

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Release: Friday, July 18, 2014 (limited)

[Theater]

I would like to conduct some research and find out the origins of the eye-roll. I wonder who the first person to do it was, and how such a subtle gesture came to signify “Oh my god, I don’t believe this for a second.”

A science-based drama whose fictional elements are of a highly serendipitous nature, I Origins requires a radically high level of suspension of disbelief. And even if you are willing to put that effort in there’s a good chance you won’t be rewarded for your patience and — pardon the expression — good faith, as the story often times ditches emotional attachment in favor of trying to impress with biology jargon and fancy rhetoric.

The director of the curious sci-fi fantasy Another Earth ushers into cinemas another potentially profound conversation starter — “hey, did you know that eyes really are the windows to the soul? No, I’m not kidding. You should check out this movie called. . .” — but unfortunately you’d be left with just one “good” opening line and not much to back it up. If you dared venturing any further with what you know of the movie, you’d be sitting there trying to explain to your date, who now shifts pretty uncomfortably in their seat, why particular iris patterns probably means Charles Darwin was onto something.

In other words, all this profound shit can be romantic, but to a point.

If you somehow haven’t yet rolled your eyes in response to this overblown set-up to my review, then I’ve achieved something perhaps just as miraculous as the finding of a little girl in India, a special individual who just happens to possess the exact eyes Dr. Ian Gray (Michael Pitt) has been on the hunt for for years. He and his lab partner, Karen (Brit Marling) have been working on the theory that the complexity of the human eye is a major indicator of evolution as opposed to intelligent design being the work of a superior being.

To counter all the cold, calculating world of science, Cahill then presents a French woman named Sofi (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey) whom Ian happens upon at a party one cold evening. An enigma whose views on God and the afterlife are initially as wrapped in mystery as her skin is by layers of winter clothing, Sofi ultimately embodies that part of us which is concerned with a higher power. When the two fall into a deep and passionate love, flavors of Baz Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet are hinted at as I Origins quickly goes off on a romantic tangent. Oddly enough, this won’t be the last time a comparison to modern fairytales can be easily made, though it might be the last positive one.

Sofi is a role with dual purposes. While serving as a refreshingly down-to-Earth religious individual, she’s also the emotional core to the film. That’s an achievement both accidental and through the direction of a man with big ideas. By design, Sofi’s a tragic character, our emotional attachment to whom we’ll pay dearly for roughly an hour into the affair. It’s purely through less assured writing we feel only something for her and barely register any empathy for any others. (Well, barring one particular event.) Neither Karen nor Ian have been blessed with much personality. Then again, the pair spend most of their waking hours in a lab under fluorescent lighting.

But really, these are minor issues when compared. What is a bigger deal is the fact that I Origins exudes confidence when it really shouldn’t. The smoke and mirrors tactic gets old in a hurry once we realize the stack of happenstance situations are merely byproducts of a clumsy, seemingly rushed script and not more evidence of God moving in mysterious ways.

The fact that Ian Gray encounters the child he needs to, where he needs to; his crazy billboard strategy — which is his desperate attempt to lure ‘the eyes’ to a central location to force this search to have even an ounce of realism — and the fact it even works at all, are all symptoms of a script that is jumping to conclusions too fast. We’re not sure if these moments are incidental, or if they have something to do with the (dis)connect between religion and science.

By the time the film arrives in India it’s too much set-up and not enough proof. There is something to be said for failed experiments. But what of the positive things are there to say? Unfortunately this time, there aren’t that many.

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2-5Recommendation: If you’re fancying something on the intriguing side, you could do much much worse than this semi-spiritual, semi-scientific approach to an age-old debate. Very chicken-and-the-egg type of argument that unfortunately loses its footing as it plods onward. Viewers who have seen Another Earth might be more attracted to the director’s sense of style and his dreamy visuals but anyone else might find themselves underwhelmed. Especially for those looking for a believably thought-provoking discussion.

Rated: R

Running Time: 107 mins.

Quoted: “What would you do if something spiritual disproved your scientific beliefs?”

All content originally published by Digital Shortbread and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Elysium

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Release: Thursday, August 8, 2013

[Theater]

Having waited for this movie since December at least, I was thoroughly excited walking into the theater last night. Something was also telling me, adding to the excitement: that of all the movies that have come out this year promising to pack a punch and have subsequently caused controversy over whether or not said movies did just so (the biggest elephant in the room wears a red cape), something told me Elysium would rise to the occasion. In the hands of Neill Blomkamp I assumed this one would actually deliver on its promises. Its check mark number four on my Ten Taste Tests post, and its a check mark for rising to the occasion, too. Blomkamp’s follow-up to his 2009 effort may not surpass, but it effectively confirms that his vision is one to trust. This film packs all of the wallop its trailers were suggesting, and is once again brutally dystopian and all but too realistic. . . . in a sci-fi kind of way at least.

Blomkamp once again puts a vast majority of the film’s burden upon the shoulders of a strong central lead — in this case, Matt Damon as Max DeCosta, a formerly troubled youth who’s determined to change his ways (and for the most part, has) and now works on a mechanical line in a factory. He is among the millions who have been left to live (and mostly suffer) on a war-ravaged, poverty-stricken planet Earth, while those who have wealth and power have been evacuated to a floating paradise above the Earth, a white wheel-looking space station named Elysium. On the station incredible technological advances have allowed people to heal impossible wounds, replace DNA and rid themselves of disease and imperfections. Elysium is presided over primarily by the strict enforcer Defense Secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster) and she epitomizes the culture apparent there.

There is a fantastic wide shot of several ships attempting to dock with Elysium early in the film that haven’t been authorized to do so, and when push comes to shove, Delacourt orders the ships to be destroyed. The moment demonstrates the movie’s breathtakingly large scale and beyond-reasonably impressive CGI, as well as the heavy political overtones (specifically targeting immigration) that Blomkamp has chosen to douse Elysium in.

After a horrible accident at the factory, Max becomes fatally exposed to radiation and is given exactly five days to live. None of this information is coming from an actual doctor, but instead a robot who coldly tells Max to simply sign for the medication he will need and then to take the prescribed amount of medicine before his death. No nuance, no cheering up, no smiles. Just the mechanical truth. In his significantly weakened state, Max is determined to get up to Elysium and find a cure for his poisoning. He seeks out the help of “Spider” (Wagner Moura) who is in charge of sending off ships that are docked on Earth. Through Spider and his team of “surgeons” (?) Max is transformed from human to humanoid and is now charged with retrieving sensitive information from an executive official — the same man Max saw briefly immediately after his accident, a man named John Carlyle (William Fichtner).

The plan is to implant the information into Max’s brain, by literally plugging it into a USB port in his head. This is some wicked cool technology and — yes, okay, a little icky — mostly just badass. However, when Max and his heavily-armed crew take down Carlyle’s incoming ship, they find they can’t decode the information, and find themselves under fire when Delacourt sends her secret hit-man/ruthless murderer Kruger (Sharlto Copley) to deal with them. Max manages to escape but now finds himself the single target of the incredibly powerful Delacourt and her minions. Damn it though if Damon’s humanoid version of Jason Bourne is going to be stopped — the second half of the movie is incredibly fun to watch as a result.

Blomkamp is not quite as careful with his direction here as he was with District 9. Elysium is extremely stylish, grisly violent and provocative in many senses. But in dealing with its bigger themes, this movie is a little clumsy. (I’m not sure if it’s clear enough on what stance the director takes on anti-immigration laws. . . but if I just had to guess, I think he’s opposed to them. . . )

Case in point, Jodie Foster is terrible in this movie, which is a tremendous shock. Her Delacourt is wooden and she forces an awkward accent that is intended to reflect an air of superiority, but it’s more annoying than anything. For that matter, I didn’t much care for Fichtner’s Carlyle, either. He had fewer lines but was still carelessly written as subhuman, intentionally. The dressing up of these pseudo-villains felt awkward and gimmicky, and seemed to water down the movie in terms of its serious tone. Regardless, the majority of the cast is more than capable, and Damon — mostly due to his character going through so much — is very compelling to watch. Copley as Kruger is particularly sadistic and tends to make up for the disappointing Delacourt and others in high command at Elysium — almost to a fault. He gets a little whacked-out cartoonish in the end but the Scottish accent still maintained his ferocity legitimately. Imagine a Die Hard villain on bath salts and you’d get Elysium‘s Kruger.

The film is not completely indistinguishable from District 9, although endless comparisons are probably going to be made between the two dystopian futures — but that’s a really good thing honestly. What Elysium lacks in its intelligence quota, it makes up for in unrelenting action and maintaining a level of tense discomfort that seems unusual for a summer blockbuster. Maybe Elysium is really saved by its rating on that front. If this had been forced into a PG-13 rating, instantly a lot of that intensity would be gone. Regardless, the film has its incredible strengths despite some modest disappointments. No film is perfect, obviously. While I expected to be rooting against Foster’s character, I didn’t expect to root against Foster herself, but hey.

#YOLO

No doubt, this film is not letdown by its trailers. Elysium packs a punch with its raw action and astounding visuals. Its certainly not a drawn-out affair. Clocking in at an hour and thirty-seven minutes effectively compacts a large-scale movie into a small-sized package. When you combine that with quite the satisfying premise of two castes of society divided between the ground and a beautiful space station, you have a strong contender for best action film of the year.

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3-5Recommendation: In the words of Team America: World Police, “Matt Daaaayymmaaan…!” But really, he is very good in his role, if not enhanced by his circumstances. Any fan of Damon’s is likely to be bowled over completely, and his supporting cast (minus the decidedly villainous higher-ups) are all solid as well, so if you’re seeking out a blockbuster film with good acting, then go see Oblivi….er, Elysium. It’s about as entertaining as the big budget bad-boys are going to be this summer, rest assured.

Rated: R

Running Time: 97 mins.

Quoted: “This isn’t going to kill me. . .”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited. 

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com