The Divergent Series: Allegiant Part 1

Posted on March 17, 2016 at 5:26 pm

I can’t help it. They’re all beginning to run together in my head. How many post-apocalyptic stories featuring hot young stars as the brave teen heroes who are the only ones who can save the day for freedom and middle aged, classically trained actors as the totalitarian villains trying to stop them can we have?

At some point, I forget which one has Meryl Streep (“The Giver”), which one has Julianne Moore (“The Hunger Games”), which one has Patricia Clarkson (“Maze Runner”), and which one has Kate Winslet and Naomi Watts (“The Divergent Series”). When this latest and second-to-last installment of the “Divergent” series has its lead characters scaling an enormous wall in response to a message from an entirely unknown source outside (like “Maze Runner”) and the romance heats up (“Hunger Games”) and another distinguished actor shows up to explain what is going on (“The Giver”), the narratives all sort of begin to merge.

So, let’s try to get it straight. “Divergent” is the one where a post-apocalyptic Chicago had genetically modified its inhabitants so that they each had one strength: compassion, intelligence, courage, honesty, and peacefulness. At age 16, each person is tested and assigned to the appropriate faction. He or she must leave the family; the faction is the family now. The test reveals that Beatrice “Tris” Prior (Shailene Woodley) is “divergent,” with multiple strengths. That makes her a threat to the system and to the people who control it, led by Jeanine (Kate Winslet), who was killed at the end of the last chapter. As this film begins, Tris and Four (Theo James) are deciding what to do about a message calling on them to leave Chicago to find out more about what role the Divergents can play to solve the problems that led to the creation of the faction system. Tris believes she must answer the invitation, but Four worries that it could be a trap.

Four’s mother, Evelyn (Naomi Watts), formerly a leader of the rebel forces, is now beginning to show Jeannine-like tendencies (yes, this is a lot like “Hunger Games”), allowing public executions. She tells Four, her long-estranged son, she is doing it for him, but he sees what she is doing as yet another betrayal.

Tris and Four make it beyond the wall (an extreme version of rappelling is the film’s best action sequence and the only one to match the adrenalin-surge and dynamism of the earlier film’s zip-wire scene) and, behind a digital “camo wall” find a community of “pures,” non-genetically modified people, led by David (Jeff Daniels), who explains in near-folksy genial terms that Chicago was an experiment and its inhabitants were constantly monitored, somewhere between lab rats and “The Truman Show.” Meanwhile, Four, her brother Caleb (Ansel Elgort) and her friends have been assigned to either monitor or fight (with some cool new drone gear).

There are some fancy visuals but as with the earlier chapters no special effects are close to the impact of Woodley’s hazel-colored doe eyes or James’ smoulder. And there’s a bright spot when we meet a new character, Matthew, sympathetically played by Bill Skarsgård, who looks more like the younger brother of “Madame Secretary’s” Erich Bergen than the real-life brother of the various handsome members of the Skarsgård family.

But the plot is overly complicated on the surface, padded (really, can we stop turning three books into four movies?), confusing, and unsatisfying, without the exhilaration we felt as Tris discovered and deployed her power in the first two. She spends too much time in a room listening to David, and a visit to Providence for a meeting with the Council is poorly handled. If this movie had a faction, it would be: placeholder until the last chapter.

Parents should know that this film includes extensive sci-fi/action violence with guns, explosions, and crashes, with many characters injured and killed, brief strong language, and non-explicit nudity in shadow.

Family discussion: Why did Evelyn think she had to use force, despite what had happened before? How did Four and Triss look at the invitation from outside the wall differently? Why did David lie?

If you like this, try: the earlier films in the series and the “Hunger Games” and “Maze Runner” films

Fantastic Four

Posted on August 6, 2015 at 4:53 pm

Three things a superhero movie should not be: dreary, dull, and tedious. Three things this movie is: see if you can guess. I am a huge fan of the comic book series Fantastic Four, which I first read as a teenager, ready for something with a little more edge and attitude than my beloved Superman. I have suffered through previous efforts to make their stories work on film, and dared to hope that this one would be better. It is awful in every category. The script is terrible, wasting much too much time on a revamped origin story that goes back to 5th grade(!) and the high school science fair(!) and still does not tell us anything interesting about the characters or how they got their powers. The characters are dull and all seem to be acting in separate bell jars, with no indication that there is another human being in the scene. Even when they are supposed to be friends, siblings, parent and child, or possible romantic partners, they act as though the other person was a tennis ball hanging in front of a green screen.

People who are supposed to be super-smart do things that are super-stupid. Like constantly. One thing scientists understand very well is that empirical data matters. So when things go terribly wrong when you try something, what’s the deal with doing the same thing again without taking any new steps to prevent further disasters? And Reed Richards’ only complaint is that the new pod is not as pretty as the old one and needs ten minutes of corrections to the code?

The dialog is filled with appalling clunkers like, “Do you ever think about what would have happened if you never came to the science fair?” “We cannot change the past. But we can change the future.” It even has locker-room style pep talks like, “He’s too much for each of us, but if we all work together we can beat him!” And many of the comments are just pointless and there are developments that have no logic of character or plot, indicating that the movie was even worse at some point and was cut like someone was slicing the bruises off a banana. The special effects look like they were created on Fiverr. The action scenes are muddy and static. At just over 90 minutes, it still feels endless.

And another boneheaded decision: while the comic book characters are adults, somebody decided to age them down into teenagers for this version so we could add in some adolescent angst, a love triangle that is about at the level of who will ask Sue to the prom, and, I am not making this up (I wish I were), the whole superpower thing happens because those darn kids get drunk one night and take the dimensional traveling machine thing out for a tipsy joyride. Think “Fantastic Four 90210.” We’ll have fun, fun, fun ’til Daddy takes the dimensional traveling pod away!

And what is the number one requirement for a superhero movie? A great villain. No such luck here. The bad guy is just a moody misfit who likes the same girl as the other guy and just might blow up the planet over it. And somehow when he’s abandoned for a period of time in another dimension on what looks like another planet with no life forms of any kind, somehow he manages to eat enough to stay alive AND come away with a really cool new cape and hood, sewn for him I guess by little elves? And unless Sue Storm’s new powers include hairstyle changes, the continuity people on this film have some ‘splaining to do.

There is a legendary Fantastic Four movie, available only on bootleg, made in 1994 as an “ashcan” film, not intended for release, just to preserve the studio’s rights to the characters. My bet is that it is better than this version. There is no bad guy in the history of the characters who has inflicted as much damage on the F4 as this sorry, soggy mess. (Thankfully, the plans for the sequel have been scrapped.)

Parents should know this film features extended sci-fi/comic-book peril and violence, some disturbing images of characters getting fried and exploding, parental death, domestic violence, some strong language, and drinking and drunkenness.

Family discussion: Why did Reed run away? How are Reed and Victor alike?

If you like this, try: “The Avengers” and “Iron Man” and the Fantastic Four comics, especially those featuring Galactus

See The Year’s Most Intriguing Actors In New Kissing Scenes: NY Times Magazine

Posted on December 13, 2014 at 8:00 am

The New York Times brought together the stars of some of this year’s biggest films and asked them to kiss. Each is a tiny gem of a film that suggests so much more.

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Actors Shorts

That Awkward Moment

Posted on January 30, 2014 at 6:00 pm

A cast of exceptionally appealing performers and some very funny lines are not enough to make this raunchy comedy overcome its essential charmlessness. At its heart, it wants to be a romantic comedy, a chick flick from the perspective of the guys. But even Zac Efron, Miles Teller, and Michael B. Jordan cannot make us wish these guys on anyone, and especially not on Ellie (Imogen Poots) and Chelsea (Mackenzie Davis).

Best bros/ladykillers Jason (Efron), Daniel (Teller), and Mikey (“Fruitvale Station” breakout Michael B. Jordan) make a pledge to avoid entanglements of the romantic kind and devote themselves to a “roster” of willing lovelies, kicking to the curb any woman who has the temerity to start a sentence with “So.” “So,” it seems, never leads to anything good. It is always the precursor to some version of “where do you think this is going?” If it is supposed to be endearing that Jason’s response to a “So” conversation from a woman he has been having sex with for six weeks is an internal “I didn’t know we were dating” while he comforts her with a variation of “It’s not you, it’s me,” it fails to persuade us. “I’m not even close to the guy you need, the guy you deserve,” he comforts her as he escorts her to the door.

Brief interruption for an important message: Guys, if you sleep with someone, it is likely that she thinks you’re in a relationship. Ladies, unless you don’t care whether you’re in a relationship or not, don’t sleep with him until you have a relationship first. And if you are looking for someone who has a bed frame and does not drink coffee from a cereal bowl, then check those things out before you go to bed with him.

Mikey gets dumped by his wife, who tells him she is having mind-blowing sex with her lawyer, who, according to Mikey, looks like Morris Chestnut. A repeated joke that white people do not know who Morris Chestnut is will not make sense to those who are fans of the handsome actor or those who do not know his work.

Jason and Daniel, who work together illustrating book covers, decide that the best way to comfort the devastated Mikey is to make a promise that they will sleep with a lot of women and not get emotionally entangled. As has been true ever since before Shakespeare, this pledge is always immediately followed by meeting an irresistible woman.

Daniel has been relying on his gal pal Chelsea to act as his wingwoman, though her role is limited to some mild banter interspersed with the highly unoriginal tactic of complimenting pretty women’s shoes and then turning her over to Daniel with some outrageous lie intended to capture their interest and sympathy (“he’s a virgin”).

Jason meets a smart, pretty girl named Ellie at a bar, has sex with her, and then concludes, based on the flimsiest of evidence, that she is a hooker (his term), despite the fact that she didn’t make any effort to negotiate payment. So, he dashes out while she is asleep, only to find, in a highly unoriginal “Top Gun”/”Grey’s Anatomy” twist, that she is a client of his firm and he is supposed to impress her.

And Mikey tells the guys he is pursuing a girl he met in the bar, but in reality he is pursuing the wife who asked him for a divorce.

The ups and downs of these relationships are thin at best and most often icky and crass. Another plot development seems lifted from the vastly superior “High Fidelity.” And another asks us to find theft and deception endearing. The female characters are underwritten male fantasies — easily seduced, easily placated, undemanding, and with mad Xbox skillz. Even the big public apology that is the very hallmark of a chick flick is unimpressive. What people seem to miss is that if a raunchy comedy is supposed to be romantic, the worst of the raunch has to be by proxy with the least sympathetic character, as in “American Pie.” This movie is not even close to the one we need, the one we deserve.

Parents should know that this movie is extremely raunchy, with explicit sexual references and situations, some graphic images, and brief pharmaceutical abuse.

Family discussion: What scares Jason about the “so” sentences? Why were the guys afraid to tell each other the truth? Why did Chelsea spend so long acting as wing woman?

If you like this, try: “Going the Distance” with Drew Barrymore and Justin Long

Related Tags:

Comedy Romance

First Kiss: “The Spectacular Now”

Posted on July 26, 2013 at 8:49 am

Here’s a lovely scene from one of this year’s best independent films, “The Spectacular Now,” starring Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller (who will also both appear in the upcoming “Divergent”).

Director James Ponsoldt says:

This is one of my favorite scenes in the entire movie. I always knew I wanted to film in it one long, continuous, unedited take, walking and talking with Aimee and Sutter, feeling like we — the audience — are part of a natural conversation that ebbs and flows from goofy and awkward to serious to emotional to flirtatious and nervous to…a first kiss. I wanted the scene to feel as natural as life. Of course, it meant that the burden was on Shailene and Miles to nail the scene (in a long take, everything has to come together perfectly — or else the shot is useless) — and our camera operator had to back-pedal for 5 minutes on a muddy, slippery path.

What Shailene and Miles ultimately did in this scene is so casual and unguarded and spontaneous that some people think the scene was improvised. It wasn’t. Shailene and Miles are just that great as actors — so present, so connected to their roles, and so willing to embrace whatever happens in the moment (bumping into a tree branch or swatting a pesky mosquito, hearing rumbling storm clouds, etc.).

To put it simply, here’s why this scene is one of my favorites: it actually feels like two people falling for each other.

I’ve seen this scene over a thousand times and I still get chills when Miles and Shailene kiss. I’m so, so inspired by their beautiful work.