Wednesday, May 2, 2018

Screen Log 11: Split; A Quiet Place; Blade Runner 2049; Baby Driver; Logan

"Blade Runner 2049."

Finally got around to watching M. Night Shyamalan's SPLIT. James McAvoy's drop-dead terrific in it, but man, Betty Buckley was one shit psychiatrist. I mean, going to the patient's house in the dead of night? Harboring secrets you know would do way more harm than good? Had she survived, she should have been stripped of her license. Quack!

Also, finally saw A QUIET PLACE, directed by John Krasinski and starring him and his wife Emily "Some-hideous-skirt-convention-you-have-to-go-to" Blunt. I saw this on the first "Avengers: Infinity War" weekend, and the cinema still drew a sizable crowd, who squirmed and shrieked and screamed at the right places. I loved this movie, despite its faults. I loved the photography, the sound, Emily Blunt, the world-building. I could point out the flaws in the story, how many of the things that took place were contrivances. But I won't. Because I really enjoyed this film. And isn't that all that matters sometimes? But I would still feed Millicent Simmonds' character to the beasts, no question about it, spoiled brat.

I still don't get the appeal of BLADE RUNNER 2049. Yes, it's magnificently, astoundingly shot by Roger Deakins. But I really, really agree with Ty Burr of The Boston Globe when he said that somewhere in this nearly three-hour saga is a terrific 100-minute movie. Too long, Denis, just too long. I don't hate this movie; I think it is proficiently, even imaginatively done. But jumping-up-and-down love, you won't get from me.

Such love you also won't get from me for another technical masterpiece of 2017, Edgar Wright's BABY DRIVER. It's really the editing (done in real time, in case you haven't heard) and the music and the sound that are the real stars of this otherwise thinly rendered story. Am I a snob now? The movie just kept losing me whenever Ansel Elgort got out of a car, because then there's really nothing there except actors such as Kevin Spacey and Jamie Foxx and John Hamm hamming it up. The placelessness of it all, I get; the story's supposed to come across as a fever dream, and it does, but it's one dream I can live without. Especially that wobbly, melodramatic-even-by-this-movie's-standards climax.

How. Did. I. Not. Watch. LOGAN. Earlier? And I call myself a fan of the "X-Men" films? (I don't read comics, so. I mean, I remember laying my hands on those comics as a kid, but those days were eons ago.) This new Wolverine movie though. It is very, very good. I do not want to sound like a nutjob of a fan. So I will say that it is very, very good. One more time. For the first time, I actually cared about Hugh Jackman's Wolverine. (I'm a Storm kind of guy, y'know.) But see, children, the wonders you can achieve if you only put a premium on storytelling? On characterization? James Mangold, you are a godsend. Absent James Ivory and his lyrical adaptation of "Call Me by Your Name," and this superhero movie would have been my choice for the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

No comments: