Category Archives: Review
War Machine *½|****
Building upon the remarkable success that they’ve had with their original television series, Netflix has recently made a conscious effort to balance their programming with more original movies by releasing new feature films on a weekly basis since the beginning of this year. They’ve had minor triumphs in the form of smaller budget fare like The Discovery and Win It All but David Michôd’s War Machine represents an aggressive play by Netflix to compete against Hollywood and their first-run releases by nabbing one of its biggest stars. It’s a shame, then, that the end product is far from the crowd-pleaser that it should (and could) have been and is instead a would-be satire that’s constantly at odds with what it wants to be and how it wants to convey its message.
Brad Pitt stars as four-star General Glen McMahon (a loose variation on real-life General Stanley McChrystal), who is brought in by the Obama administration to resolve the increasingly tumultuous situation in Afghanistan by promoting counterinsurgency in vulnerable regions of the country. He is closely aided by a staff of men, including the hothead General Pulver (Anthony Michael Hall) and sleazy press advisor Matt Little (Topher Grace), who regard him as a living legend (their favorite nickname for him is “The Glenimal”) and would be happy walking to the ends of the earth if it meant pleasing him. The beats of their quixotic mission are framed in voiceover from a fictionalized Rolling Stone reporter who laments their circumstances and eventually enters the film as a tag along in McMahon’s military entourage.
Of the many miscalculations present in War Machine, the most glaring is the mannered and terribly overdone lead performance by Pitt, which strikes a wrong chord from minute one and only has glimmers of redemption for the remainder of the time. With his cockeyed facial expression and his mouth fixated in an overbite that forms something of a permanent grimace, it seems Pitt wants McMahon to be a sort of larger-than-life buffoon type but it doesn’t jive with the level of respect that his staff seems to show him. The movie also can’t figure out how we’re supposed to feel about this character; if we’re intended to laugh at Pitt’s cartoonish mugging and quirky tics, then why does it so often try to make this a more dramatic personal story about McMahon’s struggles?
The answer to that question, sadly, is brought forth from Michôd’s positively aimless direction, which casts the film in wildly varying lights from scene to scene and doesn’t have the clear vision to pull a satire like this off, much less give us a useful comedy or drama in the meantime. The cheeky opening monologue properly sets the stage for a satire on a certain type of hawkish military mentality but it loses its target early on and is rendered toothless by its lack of focus and by an absence of genuine comic payoffs. Michôd doesn’t know what kind of story he wants to tell us and he doesn’t have any sort of attitude towards the material that could have given the comedy the kind of edge that it needed or the drama the kind of poignancy that it could have discovered.
Even more jarring are the misguided cameos from the likes of talented actors like Tilda Swinton, who is given a one-note role as a pestering new reporter, and Ben Kingsley, who is completely lost in his portrayal as the figurehead Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai. Other actors, like Meg Tilly as McMahon’s wife and Keith Stanfield (who gave another excellent performance earlier this year in Get Out) as a disillusioned Marine, make the most of their small roles and even steal the spotlight from Pitt in the scenes that they share with him. War Machine is about a mismanaged conflict with no clear strategy, so it’s perhaps fitting that the movie turned out to be such a mess but if Netflix wants to go to war with Hollywood, it will need to bring more to the battle than this.
Alien: Covenant **|****
Alien: Covenant is a piece of franchise filmmaking that floats aimlessly in the cold and vast darkness of space, desperately seeking a reason for its own existence. Wedged chronologically between the ponderous Prometheus and the still unimpeachable Alien, it has neither the ambition of the former nor the genuine terror of the latter and further muddies the waters for those diehard fans who may still be thirsty for answers to questions that likely didn’t need to be asked in the first place. Like another recent flop Life, itself a ripoff of the Alien films, it features supposedly smart scientists making dumb decisions that lead them to square off against a creature that’s more frustratingly familiar than fearsome.
Taking place ten years after the events of Prometheus, Covenant follows the crew of the titular spaceship as they head towards a habitable planet with a plan for colonization but when they cross paths with a seemingly more suitable planet, their captain Oram (Billy Crudup) decides it’s worth an investigation. While on the initial expedition, two crew members come in contact with alien spores that cause a gruesome demise for those infected and imminent danger for the remaining crew by way of newly spawned skittering creatures. After being saved by a mysterious inhabitant (Michael Fassbender), he fills the Covenant group in on the secrets that exist within the ominous new world that they’ve chosen to uncover.
This is Ridley Scott’s third time in the Alien universe and I’d like to believe that he’s returning to these projects for passion above paycheck but there are indications here that he’s more interested in reveling in the glory of his previous successes rather than adding something meaningful to its mythology. He also falls into the increasingly common problem with prequels which involves unnecessarily demystifying aspects of the original work to the degree that their novelty becomes diminished in hindsight. There’s really no need to explain away every facet of how these alien creatures came to be or how they function and deconstructing the nature of their existence makes them less “alien” than they were intended to be in the first place.
Even though Prometheus was also guilty of these sins, at least it was committed to its inquisitiveness with a keen sense of wonder and a human sense of trepidation when exploring the universal questions that have kept mankind at bay for centuries. Aside from an excellent prologue that reunites Fassbender with Prometheus co-star Guy Pearce, Covenant forgoes any existential musing in favor of painfully conventional slasher-inspired horror sequences replete with gratuitous bloodshed and often unconvincing CGI. It’s also difficult to root for a group of seemingly intelligent people who make bafflingly bad choices; I’m no scientist but even I can tell you that setting foot on an uncharted planet without a space suit is probably a poor idea.
Before my screening, my theater played a promising trailer for the upcoming Blade Runner 2049, a belated sequel to another Ridley Scott masterpiece that could be counted among my most anticipated movies of the year. Besides a talented cast and a technical team that includes Johann Johannsson and Roger Deakins, the film is being helmed by visionary director Denis Velleneuve, who is looking to capitalize on the success of last year’s breakout hit Arrival. Perhaps it’s time to let another creative voice have control over the Alien franchise as well because if Alien: Covenant is any indication, Scott may have finally run out of story to tell in this sci-fi saga.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ***½|****
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 reunites the titular group as they enlist themselves for interplanetary odd jobs like protecting valuable batteries from being eaten by a giant space squid but when one such mission goes south, they are saved by a mysterious figure who calls himself Ego (Kurt Russell) and claims to be Peter Quill’s (Chris Pratt) father. Upon traveling to Ego’s planet (aptly called Ego’s Planet), Quill is excited about the prospect of getting to know the father who was never a part of his childhood, while Drax (Dave Bautista) and Quill’s love interest Gamora (Zoe Saldana) are more apprehensive about their circumstances. Meanwhile, the mouthy raccoon-hybrid Rocket (Bradley Cooper) and his tiny companion Baby Groot (a high-pitched Vin Diesel) repair the gang’s crashed ship while avoiding the Ravengers led by the menacing Yondu (Michael Rooker).
From a brilliant opening credit scene that is even more playful than that of the original to a poignant conclusion that feels fully earned, Guardians 2 throws plenty (admittedly, too much) out to its audience but delivers with such a high rate of consistency that its excess is often more virtue than vice. Whereas other guargantuan superhero movies have a tendency to ignore certain characters as the plot moves along, Gunn is careful not to turn his back on any of his heroes and is admirably thorough in giving a fleshed-out story arc to each of the five Guardians on top of the new additions to the cast. More importantly, these storylines don’t just correspond with how to get each player from one action setpiece to another; they expand on the emotional foundation laid out by the first film and give us more reason to care about the struggles of these characters.
None of this is to say that Gunn has lost his smart aleck brand of whip-smart humor in the process, as Guardians 2 offers loads of cartoonish visual gags, quotable one-liners and metatextual jokes to also make it one of the funniest films in the MCU lineup. I laughed loud and often throughout the movie, specifically during an extended sequence in which Baby Groot tries to help Rocket and Yondu break out of a prison by enthusiastically fetching various items that he deems critical to their success. In another scene that riffs on the diegetic soundtrack, Ego muses on the lyrics of the ’70s hit “Brandy” by Looking Glass with Quill in a way that would seem incredibly corny for a more conventional drama but in a knowing comedy like this one, the parallels between the song and the story somehow feel both comical and credible.
Beyond the clever writing, Gunn also steps up his directing game and contributes a great deal of visual flair to his space opera with a vibrant palette of neon-infused CG effects at his disposal that make DC’s efforts look even more dismal and drab by comparison. Credit cinematographer Henry Braham for not only providing action scenes that are easy to follow but for his compositional work on simpler shots like a close-up of Quill’s face in a key moment and a wide shot of Gamora sitting solitary admidst a sea of untouched desert. All of these details give Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 a leg up on the film that introduced these characters first and proves that sequels can correct the errors of an initial entry, especially when more creative control is given to the right people.
Their Finest ***½|****
When the script is written, the studio moves forward with production by casting the aging British star Ambrose Hilliard (Bill Nighy) in the lead role and the handsome American war pilot Carl Lundbeck (Jack Lacy) as his counterpart, even though the disparity between their acting chops becomes clear once it comes time to shoot the movie. As issues pop up on set, Catrin and Tom are called to fix them with extensive re-writes that keep up on their respective typewriters through all hours of the evening. A playfully combative relationship develops between the two and soon they develop a true affection for one another, even though Catrin appears to be married to a struggling painter named Ellis (Jack Huston) back at home.
For a film that focuses so intently on screenwriters and the integral part that they play in the movie making process, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the biggest strength of Their Finest is the excellent screenplay by Gaby Chiappe, whose previous credits include various BBC series but no feature films prior to this one. She effortlessly weaves all the movie-within-a-movie elements with the personal struggles and triumphs of each character into a script that’s crackling with loads of fresh dialogue (I imagine Catrin would admire it greatly). There are also resonant bits of philosophy about how can cinema affect us, as Tom paraphrases Hitchcock when referring to film as “real life with the boring bits cut out” and speaks to the comforts that films can give us, saying “when bad things happen [in movies], there’s a reason, unlike in life.”
The story is brought to life with wit and charm by a fantastic ensemble cast spearheaded by the lovely Gemma Arterton, who has previously starred in dispiriting dreck like Prince of Persia and Runner Runner but here finds a breakout role that’s worthy of her eminent talent. Her Catrin is smart, sassy and sensitive in equal measure and serves as a protagonist that’s nearly impossible to turn your back on, even when the story calls on her to make difficult decisions on behalf of herself and the studio producing the film. Every bit as excellent is Bill Nighy as the past-his-prime matinee idol who initially has an air of haughtiness that should make him insufferable but instead makes his rascally and unpredictable Ambrose one of the most watchable characters on screen.
The Danish director Lone Scherfig tells this tale with all the whimsy that it deserves but she also doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities of life during war in a region where air strikes were often a brutal daily occurrence that could claim bystanders at any minute. Prolific film composer Rachel Portman ties the movie together with a plucky and sentimental musical accompaniment that never calls attention to itself, a trait that seems to be diminishing among most of the scores coming out of Hollywood these days. Their Finest is enchanting historical fiction that will give Americans different perspective on the Second World War but it also may give all audiences a brand new reason to fall in love with the movies all over again.
The Circle **|****
The story involves a bright young woman named Mae (Emma Watson), who gives up her dead-end job to join The Circle, a nebulous Apple/Facebook/Google-type digital conglomerate headed up by the charismatic Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks). She soon distinguishes herself among her cohorts (“guppies”, as they’re affectionately titled) and rises up the ranks to become one of the company’s chief creative strategists, pitching ideas to improve their TrueYou platform. After spending more time at The Circle, Mae begins to peel back the picture-perfect corporate culture to reveal darker secrets that lurk under the surface with the help of a mysterious employee played by John Boyega.
Director James Ponsoldt, who’s responsible for winning indie dramas like The Spectacular Now and The End of the Tour, has a talent for bringing out the intimate and human dimensions in his stories, so it’s no wonder that he’s such a poor match for this material given its preference for machine over man. Save for a pair of performances by Glenne Headly and the recently deceased Bill Paxton as Mae’s parents, the movie is sorely lacking any kind of emotional anchor upon which to tether any kind of techno-paranoia that may develop from the story. Mae’s doting boyfriend Mercer, played with a stunning lack of conviction by Boyhood star Ellar Coltrane, could be seen as the film’s moral backbone if it bothered to take a defined stance on the role technology should play in our day-to-day lives.
Ponsoldt doesn’t get much help from a Dave Eggers-penned script, adapted from his 2013 novel, that introduces far too many plotlines that seem to come out of left field (Mae’s story, for instance, takes a complete 180 around the halfway mark) and negate whatever narrative momentum has already been established. He has so much that he wants to say about how this kind of new technology could affect how we live and yet very few of his points are woven into the story with the kind of cohesion that would make them salient or intriguing. It plays like a half-baked episode of Black Mirror that has all of the neat gadgetry and starring roles figured out but doesn’t have enough new insight on its subject material.
Despite its apparent lack of focus, there are nuggets of inspired concepts buried within the needlessly convoluted story that suggest a more pointed or satirical take on how interact with our plethora of devices. There are visual cues like the slow proliferation of screens at Mae’s desk to the sea of illuminated emblems in an audience enamored with their tablets that subtly remind us just how inundated we are with bright new distractions every day. In the film’s best scene, Mae tells an employee conducting her job interview that her greatest fear is unfulfilled potential and if that’s the case, there’s no doubt that The Circle would have terrified her.
Free Fire ***½|****
It’s 1978 and an arms deal, brokered by Justine (Brie Larson) and Ord (Armie Hammer) between IRA soldier Chris (Cillian Murphy) and flashy gun runner Vernon (Sharlto Copley), is taking place in an abandoned warehouse in Boston. The meeting goes smoothly enough at the outset with members of each party introducing themselves to one another but after a pair of misunderstandings (one business related and one much more personal), the deal goes sour and everyone involved is soon scrambling towards the nearest available firearm and taking cover. Negotiations for the remaining ammo and money play out as characters parlay loudly over the sound of errant bullets whizzing through the air.
Keeping track of the stakes and “who’s who” of Free Fire can be a tricky proposition –one character even admits he doesn’t know who he’s aiming for at one point — but the craftsmanship behind the choreography and camerawork is far from haphazard. Some may fault the claustrophobic cinematography that lacks establishing shots that might better outline the terrain but as these are characters who spontaneously find themselves in a volatile situation, I appreciated that Wheatley tends to keep us in the trenches as opposed to giving us the privilege of bird-eye perspectives. He also isn’t opposed to the occasional visual flourish to give some extra flare, like the point-of-view shot of a crosshair as it’s quickly being raised up to the shooter’s eye.
As much as this film has to offer on the visual side of the coin, the sound design is even more impressive when you break down the technical components of making an action movie like this. Not only do each of the weapons that the characters fire have their own unique sonic properties but the sounds of the competing gunfire create a sort of “chatter” of its own kind apart from the actual dialogue that’s spoken. It’s also important that the words don’t get drown out by the gunplay and the voices have just enough clarity to them while still sounding like they’re being spoken in the natural environment; I imagine most of the lines were recorded with ADR but they don’t have that “vocal booth” sterility to them.
The banter that’s spoken between the members of this all-star cast could have been cheeky or a bit too on-the-nose but the screenplay, written by Wheatley with frequent collaborator Amy Jump, is irreverent and playful in all the right ways. It also doesn’t introduce major contrivances to help move the bare bones narrative along; developments arise naturally from the reckless action (or inaction) of its characters and tension is distilled from the fact that they’re primarily stuck in this one location for the entire incident. Free Fire may not aim high with its cinematic ambitions but as the lean and mean action indie that it is, it does the job exceedingly well.
Personal Shopper **½|****
Clouds of Sils Maria director Olivier Assayas teams up once again with Kristen Stewart for this intermittently tense but frustratingly illusive psychological thriller that mingles in both the very tangible world of high fashion and the equally intangible spirit realm. Personal Shopper is quite the blend of genres — part ghost story, part soul-searching drama, part murder mystery — and Assayas almost manages to pull the concoction off. Unfortunately, the ethereal side of the storytelling offers more tantalizing questions than satisfying answers and doesn’t provide the kind of closure that both the main character and the audience seek.
Stewart plays Maureen Cartwright, a lonely young woman who lives in Paris and travels around Europe buying clothes for wealthy supermodels who don’t have the time or inclination to shop for themselves. We find out that Maureen is also grieving the recent death of her twin brother Lewis and, based on a pact they formed before his passing, is using her abilities as a medium to make a connection with him from beyond the grave. While on a business trip, she receives a string of ominous text messages from an unknown number that suggest a sort of otherworldly omnipotence which indicate they could either be from Lewis or a more malevolent force.
Assayas is able to manufacture tension just from the sheer peculiarity of the narrative alone and from the unconventional shifts in tone that may throw some for a loop but may actually be the film’s biggest asset. The sequence in which Maureen initially spars with her mysterious texter during a train ride to London is gripping and insidiously patient as it unfolds in what feels like real time, with the infuriating bouncy ellipses and all. The creepy haunted house scenes like the one that opens the film have an eerie unpredictability to them and actually tend to be spookier than the jump scares of full-blown horror movies.
If the thriller-based sequences make for the most effective portions of the film, then it’s the drawn-out musings on the afterlife and the relationship between the living and the dead that ultimately bring it down. When the mystery plot wraps up, we’re treated to one conversation after another that essentially hits the same beats about the nature of spirit world and doesn’t add to a greater understanding of the characters. It’s as if Assayas had an hour and twenty minutes of a decent movie together and he decided to go on auto-pilot for the final twenty minutes and hoped that the audience either wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t care.
Even in the film’s most dubious of choices, Kristen Stewart does her best to pull it all together with another excellent performance of passion and power that further proves that she’s the real deal. Her portrayal of grief and loneliness is one that isolates her from almost all social interactions and yet she still finds ways to make her character more accessible and vulnerable than she has in previous roles. She elevates the flimsy material to such a level that it’s almost worth watching just for her but there’s too many curious missteps in Personal Shopper to give it a full-fledged endorsement.
Win It All ***|****
Joe Swanberg has been credited as a pioneer of the “mumblecore” movement, which is comprised of lower-budget films that often focus on largely improvised dialogue as opposed to a tightly crafted plot. While his new feature Win It All is more conventionally structured than previous efforts like Drinking Buddies and Happy Christmas, it still retains the hallmarks of the genre by keeping the scope of the story small and by making the dialogue naturalistic and believable. It also stars frequent Swanberg collaborator Jake Johnson (credited as co-writer and co-producer as well), who extends past his typical comedic range and turns in his most compelling performance to date.
Johnson plays the down-on-his-luck gambling addict Eddie Garrett, who spends his days as a parking attendant at Wrigley Field and spends his nights lurking for any underground card games he can find around the city. He seems to catch a break when an acquaintance offers him $10,000 to look after a mysterious duffel bag, provided that Eddie doesn’t open the bag to peruse its contents, while he does jail time for the next 6 months. Going against orders, Eddie takes a look inside and finds $50,000 in cash, which sends his mind racing with how many different ways he can gamble it all away.
After celebrating a successful night of blackjack, Eddie meets a single mother named Eva (Aislinn Derbez) and the two form a relationship that unfolds at a pace that seems leisurely for a wheeler-dealer type like Eddie. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the hilarious Keegan-Michael Key steals all of his scenes as Eddie’s Gamblers Anonymous mentor who doesn’t mince words when dispensing advice to his struggling confidant. Also filling out Eddie’s support system is his brother Ron (Joe Lo Truglio), who’s the head of his own landscaping company and begs Eddie to work for him in an effort to straighten out his path.
Ultimately, the film’s focus is on Eddie and his unwavering compulsion to gamble away every last cent that he has; as another character puts it to him, he’s “addicted to losing”. Swanberg delivers this addiction with moments of lightheartedness but also with a palpable sense of the stakes at hand, which is made quite literal with a counter that appears intermittently in the bottom right corner which denotes Eddie’s monetary standing (if you hadn’t guessed, it’s frequently a negative number). Even though there are plot points and contrivances that will be familiar to anyone who’s seen a gambling movie like this before, the story has an emotional undercurrent of desperation and loneliness that’s undeniable.
Credit to Jake Johnson for creating such an affable deadbeat who always seems like he’s on the edge of throwing away his life and running as far as he can from the problems he’s created for himself. There’s a constant anxiety and unease from his performance that made me feel on edge, along with an unending sorrow that comes across his face during every bad beat that he endures at the poker table. Indeed, there’s so much losing depicted in Win It All that it’s almost ironic how much of a winning formula Swanberg and Johnson have concocted with a movie that feels authentic and oddly endearing.
The Discovery **½|****
Writer/director Charlie McDowell follows up his heady, sci-fi romance drama The One I Love with another film that seems to fit neatly into that very same category. The difference with The Discovery lies in its tantalizing, elevator pitch of a premise: what would happen in a world where the existence of an afterlife was proven scientifically and considered as absolute as gravity? The answer to that question and the multitude of implications that it generates makes for a solid foundation of intrigue as this story’s jumping-off point but McDowell seems to get too lost inside the plot’s machinations to give us any satisfying conclusions to its queries.
The man responsible for the titular revelation is Dr. Thomas Harbor (Robert Redford), who opens the film by giving a television interview about the enormous impact that his scientific finding has had on a global scale. When asked if he feels even partially guilty for the large uptick in suicides that seem to have been spurred on by the new found guarantee of life after death, he argues that keeping such a discovery from the human race would be more criminal than divulging it. His principled stand on the subject finds a formidable counterpoint by way of a cameraman’s suicide caught live on the air, making Harbor’s stance seem even more calloused than it had before.
Also opposed to Harbor’s approach is his estranged son Will (Jason Segal), who journeys to his father’s estate two years after the discovery to dissuade him from further investigating his afterlife findings. On the ferry trip there, he meets the quirky but disturbed Isla (Rooney Mara) who is secretly planning to commit suicide once she reaches her destination on the island. After Will witnesses her attempt and intervenes, the two join Dr. Harbor and his other son Toby (Jesse Plemons) on their compound as they try to decode the mysteries behind Harbor’s research and prevent any further damage to society.
McDowell has drawn comparisons to Charlie Kaufman before but here, the similarities to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are a bit too close for comfort, especially in the way that both films introduce their central couples. A key difference is that The Discovery‘s examination of Will and Isla’s relationship is much more cursory by comparison, though it is rare to find a film with a more complete portrait of a romantic relationship than that Michel Gondry masterpiece. Still, it’s disappointing that the screenplay doesn’t spend as much time fleshing out a believeable chemistry between these two as it does positing philosophical quandaries to mentally digest.
Even if the blend of science fiction and melodrama doesn’t quite work in this instance, McDowell and his team do an excellent job of building a bleak world run amok with hopelessness and a quiet devestation that permeates every frame. Without a spiritual anchor and a meaningful way to guide the ship, every character in the story is essentially lost at sea and constantly searching for something new to grasp. If The Discovery had followed through with the promise of its premise, I have no doubt that it could have been a lasting achievement in existential sci-fi but with all of the other distracting elements in play, it’s a frustrating but admirable effort.
Life **|****
The new sci-fi horror mashup Life follows a crew of astronauts aboard the International Space Station as they successfully secure a speeding space probe from Mars that may hold the secret of life forms beyond Earth. After taking a sample from the planet’s soil, the ship’s biologist (Ariyon Bakare) discovers a single-celled organism that he’s able to revive with atmospheric adjustments and the slimy new passenger soon turns into a more complex being before their very eyes. When an experiment goes wrong in the lab one day, the new creature (who comes to be nicknamed Calvin) escapes his containment area and becomes increasingly hostile towards the astronauts on board.
The good news is that everything prior to the title card, say the first 15 minutes or so, is first-rate and includes a one-take tracking shot that expertly captures the crew in the middle of a mission as the camera zips around effortlessly in the zero-gravity environment. The bad news is that subsequent hour or so is poorly scripted, unmemorably acted and worst of all, highly derivative of other space horror films like Alien and Sunshine. From a conceptual standpoint, it feels like a rebuttal to The Martian, which is about one astronaut stranded in space who uses his intelligence and scientific know-how to navigate through his dire situation.
Life inverts this scenario and instead assigns us to a group of scientists with the kind of lackluster decision-making capabilities that have seemed to plague screaming teenagers in slasher movies for years now. Nearly every choice or plan that’s made by any character seems ill-advised and devoid of any common sense, to the degree that they’re not believable as top researchers in their respective fields, much less as reasonably smart people to begin with. This is a movie about the search for intelligent life and it seems that before Calvin enters the space station, there’s none to be found on board among the incompetent crew.
It also doesn’t help that the characters are not very well-established either, as director Daniel Espinosa is clearly in a big hurry to show us his ever-expanding digital monster rather than give us a crew worth rooting for in the first place. That’s a shame since the cast includes charismatic and capable performers like Jake Gyllenhaal and Rebecca Ferguson who aren’t able to use their star power to put some life into their one-dimensional roles. The screenwriting duo of Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick eschews any wit and flavor they may have had left from last year’s Deadpool script and instead settles for flat, perfunctory dialogue peppered with technical goobledigook for good measure.
The film doesn’t score many points on the dramatic and science fiction fronts but if you’re expecting a simple, space-set slasher movie, then there is some fun to be had as the crew members are dispatched in creative and often unexpected ways. The visual design for Calvin starts off a bit silly, as he initially flops around the lab like a squishy sponge but he continues to grow into a more sophisticated and menacing foe throughout the story. Aside from some of these horror elements and a promising opening sequence, Life is generally underwhelming and frequently reminds us of how much better it could have been.