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Pain Hustlers (2023)
Pain Hustlers is the next attempt to dramatize the numerous stories behind the opioid crisis, a storytelling edict that is becoming its own tragic true-crime sub-genre (Dopesick, Pain Killer, Four Good Days, Recovery Boys, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed). The Netflix original has a starry cast and a topical and serious subject but it’s an un-serious movie caught up in the superficial quirks and appeal of being and making a goofy crime story of greedy sleazeballs.
Liza (Emily Blunt) is a struggling single mother trying to claw her way out of debt and, with her unfinished education and criminal record, few options are widely available. Then enters Pete Brenner (Chris Evans), a loud, gouache pharmaceutical rep for a powerful pain killer. He promises a lifestyle of luxury and power, as long as Liza is willing to ignore or bend a few ethics along the way. Together, they build a sales force of attractive women who wine and dine smaller doctors in order to get them to prescribe their special drug to anyone in need. It’s just that a drug intended for end-of-life pain wasn’t meant for common headaches. As sales boom, Liza begins to worry that her glitzy lifestyle is built upon a mountain of American corpses.
The biggest drawback of Pain Hustlers is that it fully focuses on the glitz and gives lip service to the cost of chasing that avarice. Plenty of movies illuminating bad people doing bad things are accused of glamorizing the misdeeds, from gangster movies to dark romances, though this narrow viewing often seems to conflate depiction with condoning the behavior (see: The Wolf of Wall Street). Watching stories about people stumbling their way into glamorous positions should provide some allure so as to better understand the seductive draw for the characters. The world of vice and power will be a compelling conflict, but for Pain Hustlers, it falters by just focusing on the high-powered lifestyle yet it still lacks specificity to make this story feel interesting on its own. You’ve seen variations of this kind of story before (we’ll call it Scorsese-esque) about the people struggling with less who get a ticket into a new world of access and freedom and then begin to worry At What Cost. Pain Hustlers goes through its plot beats with the most mechanical of movements. The personal details from this supposedly true story feel so generic, reminiscent of similar tales like, Love & Other Drugs and Hustlers. It feels less like an insider account of how these shady people exploited so many and more like the screenplay was cobbled together by what the filmmakers assumed this story must have pertained without reading much of the source novel by Evan Hughes. It’s absent the useful details that allow more of these accounts to prosper as we investigate moral relativism.
The other nagging shortcoming of Pain Hustlers is the consequences for all these bad people. I’m not saying that we need to see comeuppance and justice levied in order for the movie to work thematically; very often these white collar criminal types receive the faintest glance of judicial punishment. What this movie lacks is the emphasis on the consequences, and considering our main characters are pushing sleazy doctors to push highly addictive opioids, that’s a big miss. The movie is all about the climb for its heroine, the comparison of having the fancy life versus a life without. It shortchanges the extremely human cost of its bad actors in a way that does a disservice to the movie and its message. Because of its lack of specificity, this story could have been propelled by any prescription drug, from Viagra to Lipitor. The fact that we’re talking fentanyl, a drug responsible for 200 deaths every day last year according to the CDC, seems immaterial, and that is bizarre.
The effects of the opioid crisis begun by Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family, and then trickled down through the complicated tributaries of the American medical infrastructure, will be felt for generations. This is a major story. It would be like, say, telling the story of a struggling single mom who decides to take a career advancement in the Nazi Party in 1940s Germany. You’re not just doing a disservice to the people who really suffered, you’re doing a disservice to the audience to ignore the gravity of their moral culpability and excuse-making, of the drama of the character having to confront their part. For a movie about people profiting from opioid over-prescriptions, there is a grand total of one scene where Liza has to deal with the harsh real-world consequences of her actions (minor spoilers ahead, but I’d advise you to continue, dear reader). Early in the movie, when Liza was forced out of her home, she spent a few days living in a motel. The neighbor lady at the motel has a husband who dies from the opioid crisis, and this one man is meant to symbolize what she has wrought as a whole. It doesn’t work, and the fact that the movie presents Liza in tears trying to make amends to this widow, a character we haven’t had any thought over since Liza leaving her Act One beginnings, is a pitiful excuse for a reckoning.
Evans (The Grey Man) and Blunt (Oppenheimer) feel on autopilot here, namely because of the broad and bland characterization. Blunt resumes her Southern accent I recall from the Quiet Place movies, but her energy level feels too low, too disengaged, like she’s already at her quiet rectitude character phase when she should be at the gee-whiz giddiness of her moral slide. Evans is meant to be playing a cad prone to vulgar boasts and condescension for those he willfully steps over to reach his goals, but his “sleazeball” acting tics feel too forced, too played up, in all the ways that Blunt feels dialed down. There’s no baseline for the two of them, so the scenes they share together feel over and under-cooked, and with a generically developed rise-and-fall screenplay to boot. Andy Garcia (Father of the Bride) is the most interesting character as the head of the company, a doctor who began trying to ensure those in desperate need could have the dignity of mitigating their pain, and transforms into a megalomaniacal huckster who only wants to keep meeting the next sales projections. His rise-and-fall seems much more steep and intriguing than trying to give us Liza, a gutsy single mom (with a wacky mother of her own played by Catherine O’Hara) who we’re supposed to identify with and forgive for playing her part in a deadly chain that has wrecked untold lives across the country and world. She did it for her own kid’s medical treatment. So it’s all okay, right?
This is director David Yates’ first movie away from the familiar confines of the Harry Potter universe since the ill-fated 2016 Tarzan reboot, and only his second non-Potter movie since 2005. Given that history, I’m curious whenever this man jumps onto a non-Potter project because you would assume it has to be special in some manner. I’ll credit Yates with changing his visual preferences from the very drabby and gray palette of his Potter filmography.Pain Hustlers adopts a lot of the stylistic tics we expect in glitzy crime thrillers, from handheld camerawork to sun-bleached colors. There are other techniques to bring a documentary-like authenticity, but the constant cutting back to black-and-white interviews with the characters after the fact only serves as a narration crutch to keep things moving. The character narration lacks further insight from the distance or remorse of the onscreen events. The whole movie feels like a copy of a Scorsese imitator, something akin to 2009’s forgettable The Middle Men, a crime movie about a plunge into the underworld from a naif that doesn’t try too hard beyond empty reconfiguration of the superior style of its influences that I doubt anyone really remembers (you might as well add directorial narration, “Ever since I was young I always wanted to make a gangster movie…”). As immediate evidence to the case, there is a slow-motion house party in Pain Hustlers set to “Turn Down For What.”
Should you spend two hours watching Pain Hustlers? Not really, though if you have a fascination with the many schemers who contributed to making the opioid crisis as trenchant and terrible as it currently is, and likely will be for the near future, then maybe there’s some mild value to be had here. But even those people would be better served watching another Netflix series tackling the same subject matter, the 2023 limited series Pain Killer. For me, the Pain Hustlers story was too broad, and where it could have broken out with specificity is where it decided to wimp out and defer to genre cliches. It’s hard for me to argue that you should spend two hours watching this movie on the subject when you would be far better served, from an informative and entertainment standpoint, watching the two-part, four-hour 2021 documentary Crime of the Century by masterful filmmaker Alex Gibney. That film is damning and compelling and authentic in ways Pain Hustlers can only hope to imitate.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
I was a nominal fan of the Mission: Impossible series after three movies, and it seemed like the American public was feeling the same. After 15 years, it felt like the franchise was considering a soft reboot/shift with 2011’s Ghost Protocol, setting up Jeremy Renner as the heir apparent to Tom Cruise’s super spy, Ethan Hunt (weirdly, Renner was also set up to be another franchise replacement for Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne in 2012). Except what may have been initially planned as a franchise hand-off became a franchise renewal, with a delightfully twisty plot, fun teamwork as they scramble to adapt, and a show-stopping action set-piece that remains the franchise’s high-point, the scaling of the towering Burj Khalifa skyscraper. It also reminded us that not only does Cruise love to run but the man has a death wish when it comes to performing his own amazing stunts. With Cruise firmly back in place as lead, and Renner jettisoned (which also happened after 2012’s The Bourne Legacy), the franchise was further boosted by two of its best additions: actress Rebecca Ferguson and writer/director Christopher McQuarrie. The Oscar-winning Hollywood screenwriting staple was not known as much for his directing efforts, but he became a Cruise confidant after 2008’s Valkyrie, and he’s worked almost exclusively on Cruise projects ever since. He earned the man’s trust and proved a fantastic action director. 2018’s Mission: Impossible Fallout is just blockbuster filmmaking at its high-stakes finest. I was bouncing in my chair with excitement and simply luxuriating in action thriller nirvana.
This time Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his select team of trusted friends and colleagues are battling a villain terrifyingly relevant to our modern times, especially in light of the screenwriters’ strike – artificial intelligence. The big bad is an A.I. that can control the world’s security apparatus, and it’s become self-aware and resentful of its human overlords. It exists inside a computer console inside a Russian submarine at the bottom of the Arctic ocean under a wall of ice, and the A.I., known as “The Entity,” doesn’t want to ever be found (must be an introvert). If only it was that easy. The world is racing to be the first to claim this unparalleled prize, and the Impossible Missions team has to ensure they can find the location, which of course involves a MacGuffin, this time two interlocking keys to access the A.I. sub station. Can Ethan get there first and can he even trust his own government to do what’s best with access to this kind of power?
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is a mouthful of a title. We got a colon, a dash, and a “part one,” a presumptuous gamble that after 160 minutes the audience is going to be ravenously hungry for a continuation in a series that has never had a two-parter before. In short, the movie is a lot, a lot of the same action and renowned stunt work we expect, and a lot of setup and extension that might have been better trimmed by focusing on one movie rather than setting up two. McQuarrie has done this before and been successful without the need of a direct two-parter. For all intents and purposes, Fallout is a direct sequel to 2015’s Rogue Nation, carrying over the same villain for the first time in the series and the ongoing relationship between Ethan and Ilsa Faust (Ferguson). Both of those movies feel complete and satisfying and well-designed in structure and development without needing one part to complete the other. With Dead Reckoning Part One, henceforth known as M:I 7 to spare me from writing this title every time, it feels like an overlong setup. By the end of the movie, our characters know where the A.I. is located but they still don’t know where the sub is or how to get there, which means the entire movie could have been collapsed into a more streamlined venture. Part of this may be the production troubles where they had to shut down and rejigger the plot multiple times from COVID outbreaks, as M:I 7 is the last of the big Hollywood movies to release that was shutdown in 2020 by the devastating pandemic. It all feels a bit overstretched and absent a satisfying conclusion.
The draw of the franchise, and chiefly its 2010s renewal back into the zeitgeist, is still the eye-popping stunts and set-pieces and Dead Reckoning still delivers. Most viewers will likely find the final action sequence aboard a speeding train to be the high-point, and it’s got some wow moments, my favorite is when the train is hanging over a blown bridge and Ethan has to leap from train car to train car before it plummets, oh and it’s all at an incline. It turns each car into a new obstacle to overcome utilizing its specific dynamics, like a dining car with a falling piano to a kitchen with vats of hot grease to avoid. The standout stunt involves Cruise driving a motorcycle off a mountain in a desperate effort to parachute onto this speeding train. However, this whole train sequence didn’t excite me too much, outside of its beginning stunt and the end. Watching men chase one another atop the speeding train, let alone wrestle and fight with knives, only serves to limit what can be done and it reminds me how fake the moment is for a franchise that has made its mark on its daredevil realism. That extended middle feels a bit too much like other Hollywood thrillers and action movies, and that’s what made it disappointing for a series I consider the current gold standard of franchise action.
A much less heralded sequence around the forty-five minute mark was my favorite, where Ethan is running around the Abu Dhabi airport while the following takes place: 1) Ethan trying to evade federal agents (the dependable Shea Whigham) looking to arrest him, 2) Ethan is trying to find the owner of one half of the MacGuffin keys who happens to be a pickpocket that keeps giving him the slip, 3) Ethan’s team, Luther (Ving Rhames, the only other actor who has appeared in every M:I film) and Benji (Simon Pegg) trying to find a nuclear bomb in a suitcase through the maze of baggage claim and disarm it, 4) the introduction of our villain Gabriel, well, our primary lackey to The Entity, who also happens to be a former IMF turncoat who killed Ethan’s girlfriend and essentially “made Ethan Hunt who he is” following Batman logic. This entire sequence is pure McQuarrie splendor, where it introduces the different characters, several at cross-purposes, lets them loose and then finds organic complications and specific turns that take advantage of the geography as well as the character’s emotional states. I loved it, and it made me hopeful that after a bit of a slow start that M:I 7 was now cooking and would be the prolonged deluge of near-perfect set-pieces that was Fallout. Not so much, but this sequence was indeed good fun.
Another issue I had was that our villain, again more like chief lackey, is so bland. I like Esai Morales (Ozark) as an actor, but the character of Gabriel is such a non-starter. Even giving him the personal history with Ethan feels like an admission that this bad guy has little to offer on his own. I think it’s part of how the character is written but I think it’s also a reflection that he’s the number two behind the all-powerful, scheming A.I., and then he too has a number two (number three?) played by Pom Klementieff (Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3), and she is so much more engaging as an antagonistic presence. She’s the one driving through cars and stonework throughout Rome to chase down Ethan. She’s the one who fights him in a narrow alleyway, a nicely claustrophobic change-of-pace action moment for a series that gorges on scale. If the true villain is going to be an A.I., why can’t Pom simply be its number two hench-person? Gabriel is redundant and boring and his fight sequences don’t feel believable against this crew.
There are a couple other storytelling choices that I wasn’t happy with, but I’ll save delving into those for the sake of spoilers. Suffice to say, I hope Dead Reckoning Part Two in 2024 course corrects and we have some welcomed returns. It’s kind of fun to see Kittridge (Henry Czerny, Ready or Not) make his first reappearance since the 1996 M:I and also get so much screen time. He’s essentially the face of the U.S. government infrastructure for the duration of the movie. His clenched-jaw consternation is a nice foil to the always rogue super spy.
Dead Reckoning – Part One is a good but not great Mission: Impossible movie, conceived as two parts and suffering some of the consequences of its over-extension. The thrills are still there, the sturdy production values, the emphasis on the spectacular stunts and fun action set pieces, so any fan of the franchise will find enough to enjoy over 160 minutes. The addition of Hayley Atwell (Avengers: Endgame) as the wily pickpocket who has stumbled into international espionage is great, though she cannot escape feeling like an Ilsa replacement while Ferguson is off-screen for too long. Cruise is still the movie star who delivers the most from film to film, and his high-wire efforts are appreciated. By the end of the movie, the sub is still at the bottom of the ocean, our characters are still in a race to find it, and I wondered why we couldn’t have ditched “Part One.” The answer, as much in Hollywood, is of course money, but I wish this Part One made me more psyched for Part Two.
Nate’s Grade: B
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The Station Agent (2003) [Review Re-View]
Originally released December 5, 2003:
This is the most charming film of 2003, and Im not just saying this because I had an interview with one of its stars, Michelle Williams (Dawson’s Creek). Fnin McBride (Peter Dinklage) is a man with dwarfism. With every step he takes every look he gives, you witness the years of torture hes been through with glares and comments. Hes shut himself away from people and travels to an isolated train station to live. There he meets two other oddballs, a live-wire hot dog vendor (Bobby Cannavale) and a divorced mother (Patricia Clarkson). Together the three find a wonderful companionship and deep friendship. The moments showing the evolution of the relationship between the three are the films highlights. Its a film driven by characters but well-rounded and remarkable characters. Dinklage gives perhaps one of the coolest performances as the unforgettable Fin. Cannavale is hilarious as the loudmouth best friend that wants a human connection. Clarkson is equally impressive as yet another fragile mother (a similar role in the equally good Pieces of April). The writing and acting of The Station Agent are superb. Its an unforgettable slice of Americana brought together by three oddballs and their real friendship. You;ll leave The Station Agent abuzz in good feelings. This is a film you tell your friends about afterwards. There’s likely no shot for a dwarf to be nominated for an Oscar in our prejudiced times but Dinklage is deserving. The Station Agent is everything you could want in an excellent independent movie. It tells a tale that would normally not get told. And this is one beauty of a tale.
Nate’s Grade: A
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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER
Tom McCarthy didn’t invent the quirky, found family indie but he sure seems to have nearly perfected it, starting with 2003’s The Station Agent. This little gem of a movie is so subdued, so relaxed, and so gentle that it seems to adopt the very personality of its lead character, Fin (Peter Dinklage), a dwarf who just likes trains a lot and wants to live his life in solitude. He’s an unassuming man who keeps to himself as a means of survival, because almost every time he goes into public life Fin is met with stares, snickers, and harassment (the convenience store lady gets his attention to take his unsolicited picture). Very few will get to know this man beyond his superficial physical characteristics, so he retreats within himself, perhaps purposely obsessing over an antiquated hobby as a means of escape to the past. He’s a lonely man and the movie is about him finding his clan, his place in the world, by slowly lowering his defenses. It’s a simple sort of story that is lifted by the strength of its characters and its wonderful ensemble cast.
With such a taciturn main character we need a contrasting character, a much more talkative person with high energy, and this is beautifully embodied by Bobby Cannavale. He plays Joe Oramas, a coffee truck operator who exemplifies joy de vie. He’s charming, garrulous, and relentlessly upbeat, which makes for a magnificent odd couple contrast with Fin, and it allows both characters to gradually change and grow attached to one another’s mutual friendship. Finn allows himself to become more vulnerable and form bonds and Joe starts to see the world from Fin’s point of view, allowing himself to slow down and appreciate the smaller things he might have missed in his excitable and irascible activity. Dinklage’s dry understated performance is a perfect counterpoint to the churning energy emanating from a grinning Cannavale. This is a fine showcase of both actors, who would go on to win six Emmys between them in the years ahead.
The third member of this found family is Olivia, played by Patricia Clarkson, and I actually think the movie might have worked better without her character. She does provide a point of view that our two guys lack; she’s experienced significant grief over a lost child and her life is in shambles as she tries to discover what she wants from her cratering marriage to a young-er John Slattery. Clarkson is also wryly enjoyable and gets some of the best lines in the movie, so she’s not at fault here. I think it’s because I’m confused about how this character is treated, especially compared to the natural opposites-attract dynamic of Fin and Joe’s friendship. Olivia feels like a broken thing that the boys need to try and help get better, but we were already covering this with Finn’s reserve from a lifetime of feeling ostracized. The possible romance between Fin and Olivia is also awkward because there are obvious implications that she sees Fin as a replacement son, even having him sleep in her son’s old bed. At one point, in her anger, she yells at Fin that she’s not his mother, but it feels much more like she’s the one who is looking for a surrogate son, and just because Fin is a dwarf and perhaps of similar heights makes the whole thing feel uncomfortable and ill-advsied. I’m not going to refuse an added Patricia Clarkson in my movie, but upon my re-watch twenty years later, it’s hard not to feel like McCarthy didn’t have as much envisioned for this part.
McCarthy’s movie acclimates the viewer to the simple charms of its people and the small town, getting to know the various characters and their foibles and hopes, getting used to the rhythms of this life and adjusting much like Fin. There are small victories that are payoffs, like Fin finally getting a library card, or speaking in front of a school class about his affinity for trains. It works so well. McCarthy continued his found family writing with 2007’s The Visitor and 2011’s Win Win, both anchored by the emotional enormity of sad, lonely men learning to open up to companionship. There were some dips in the road but McCarthy worked his found family magic to the biggest stage with 2015’s Best Picture winner, Spotlight, which McCarthy directed and co-wrote. His only follow-up theatrical movie was 2021’s Stillwater, where an oil rig dad (Matt Damon) tries to save his daughter overseas from a very ripped-from-the-headlines scandal (Amanda Knox was very unhappy). There is also a 2020 Disney Plus movie about a kid detective and his imaginary polar bear best friend (that actually sounds adorable). I guess I figured a Best Picture Oscar on your resume, as well as a history of working within the studio system and world of indies, would have given McCarthy more work than directing a handful of episodes for 13 Reasons Why and creating Alaska Daily. I’ll always be looking for the next McCarthy project when I can.
McCarthy’s failures can be just as intriguing as his successes. The Cobbler is just such an astounding idea that it’s hard to imagine anyone thinking it would work out, with Adam Sandler as a magic shoe-maker. However, this same pessimistic mentality probably prevailed when McCarthy was trying to raise money for The Station Agent. His indie successes proved that he could take any jumble of strange characters and turn it into a functional movie. Maybe that hubris, well-earned along with his contributions to the Oscar-nominated Up script, finally caught up with 2014’s The Cobbler. I would pay good money to one day watch that un-aired footage of the original Thrones pilot, the one the producers themselves acknowledged to be deeply troubled. After retooling the show and cast, bringing in Michelle Fairley and Emilia Clarke, McCarthy departed, though is credited for helping to secure Dinklage’s involvement, and it’s impossible to think of the zeitgeist-defining excellence of the HBO series with anyone else playing the iconic role of Tyrion Lannister.
Re-evaluating The Station Agent twenty years hence, its many charms are still abundant and I appreciated how gentle and relaxed everything felt. When indie movies deal with heavy amounts of quirk and oddities, it can often be heavy-handed and abrasive, never letting the audience forget for a second just how special and strange and different the movie must be (here comes 2024’s look at Napoleon Dynamite). McCarthy’s movie almost feels like a writing exercise where he plucked three very different characters out of a hat and challenged himself to build a grounded movie built upon their unexpected friendships. It’s a movie confident to just let the characters speak for themselves. It’s more a slice-of-life glimpse at people who feel far more real than most Sundance indies built upon oddballs and quirk. I would slightly lower the grade from an A to an A minus simply because of the Olivia character. Clarkson is great but her role feels undeveloped, somewhat redundant, and a little sloppy. Still, the enjoyable performances, the observational detail, and the simple pleasures of a story well told with characters you genuinely care about are what shines through even twenty years later.
Author’s note: In my original review, I cite having interviewed Michelle Williams (yes, surprise, she plays the small-town librarian). While I was my college newspaper’s film critic from January 2002 to May 2004, I did have the opportunity to interview several actors and directors through phone cattle calls with other collegiate journalists. These names include Angelina Jolie (Tomb Raider 2), Billy Bob Thornton (Bad Santa), Kevin Smith (Jersey Girl), and the late Paul Walker (Timeline). However, my school schedule was not accommodating for the Williams interview, so I had my dormitory neighbor and friend Tim Knopp call in and ask my question. It wasn’t me. I’m coming clean after twenty years, folks. I also recall having him quote a line her character says in The Station Agent, saying Fin had “a nice chin,” and being told that she was baffled and blanking on the reference. I’m sorry, eventual multi-Oscar nominee Michelle Williams, for trying to be clever.
Re-View Grade: A-
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Talk to Me (2023)
If you were at a party and were told that if you shake hands with a severed hand you could allow a ghost or spirit or whatever into your body, would you agree to this? I may be naive but I think most free-thinking adults would pass on this opportunity, but then again people are chasing all sorts of dangers as distractions or coping mechanisms, so perhaps I’m dead wrong. Now, if you present this same question to teenagers, I’m positive of different results. This is the kickoff for Talk to Me, the new hit horror movie of the summer. Mia (Sophia Wilde) discovers that this magic hand can allow her to see and talk with her mother, who killed herself about a year prior. How far will she go to reach out to her mother and what consequences is she willing to bear?
Reminiscent of Smile, the small horror hit from last year, Talk to Me is a small-scale horror thriller that might not have much extended thematic commentary but it knows how to goose an audience and ratchet up your sense of dread and compiling unease. The premise is gloriously straightforward and creepy from the start, allowing a possibly malevolent spirit to inhabit your body as a thrill. There are plenty of places to go with this premise, as flirting with the “other side” has been a staple of horror movies, just as much as teenagers making bad decisions. It’s a possession movie by way of an addiction metaphor, finding a new and impossible to replicate high, and this too as a vehicle for our protagonist to try and obliterate her grief. The characters feel downright euphoric afterwards, having communed with someone or something, and it certainly makes for fun spectator viewing. The vulnerability of losing control, and especially to a power that you have little understanding of, is a potent direction for the story. Naturally, once we’ve established “safe parameters,” we must then break them and suffer the consequences, and Talk to Me does a truly excellent job of making you feel that omnipresent trepidation. This is a creepy movie that makes fine use of practical effects and an engaged sound design. It’s nothing new from a technical standpoint but it’s yet another example of someone knowing what to do with their tools to create an affecting and uncomfortable atmosphere of uncertainty. It’s more a well-engineered thrill ride, much like my assessment of Smile, but when it’s this well done, you’re just happy to have a conductor who is operating on such a high level of execution.
There isn’t much in the way of commentary with the movie besides some fleeting criticisms of transforming personal pain and discomfort into a spectator brand. The movie doesn’t have much to say on this front other than teenagers are predisposed to make bad decisions, and giving them cell phones, social media, and a magically cursed totem might be a damning combination. The different characters treat the possessions like a party, everyone with their phone ready to record the crazy and unexpected results, many of which they cannot fully understand. There’s something there about messing with forces beyond your control and feeling protected, possibly even nigh invincible, because you’re a bystander and not a direct participant, that holding a screen in front of your face somehow stops you from being complicit in the activity. The movie utilizes the severed hand as more of a plot device than a starting point for intriguing dimensions of social commentary. Thanks to how well executed the movie is, I forgave the oversight.
I wish the movie had explored some of its intriguing avenues a little further, but one area I’m glad we didn’t need to delve into was the origin of the severed hand. Many of these curse movies push the protagonist to investigate the mysterious origins of the Evil Thing and try to find the beginning of the chain of death and destruction, such as The Ring, Smile, and It Follows. There may be a fascinating story behind this totem but I’m more than comfortable just accepting it on its own vague terms as our catalyst for unrest. I don’t require its unholy backstory. This devotes more of the 90 minutes to focusing on the characters and their emotional turmoil, which allows the grief metaphors to really simmer. It also makes for an intriguing dilemma because Mia has been granted access to her deceased mother through these very unusual circumstances. She misses her dearly and is willing to break rules to continue that connection, which puts others at risk and brings about lingering consequences. Once mom is back, it becomes an ongoing game of whether or not this could be her real mother or something malevolent manipulating her. I found this storyline to be more compelling than a series of clues connecting to more clues to reveal the history of the severed hand, likely learning about a litany of prior owners who have experienced tragedy and ruin. This centered the movie more as an extension of our main character’s grief and the limits and risks she was willing to meet in order to find closure.
The directors have been a mainstay on YouTube for a decade as the popular RackaRacka channel, and the Australian twin brothers Danny and Michael Philippou make a seamless transition into big screen horror. They don’t overload their movie with stylistic distractions, and the editing is very confident and patient to better build a sense of dread. It’s that atmosphere that proves to be the best element of Talk to Me, as the second half pushes the audience to question what we’re seeing and whether it’s reality or hallucination (also like Smile). When there are stylistic flourishes, it’s almost like its own form of a jump scare, a break from the normal. The opening house party sequence is filmed like one continuous tracking shot and it succeeds in building your unease and anticipation that some very bad things will be happening soon enough. I was especially impressed by the ending, which I won’t spoil in any significant sense, except to say that it’s a fitting and humbling conclusion that also provides a nicely morbid reversal.
If you’re in the mood for a spooky spine-tingler that delivers the goods with a streamlined story and extra emphasis on its protagonist’s fraying emotional state, then Talk to Me is for you. It’s nothing revolutionary but it is creepy and quite effective and evidence that the filmmakers have been taking careful notes about what makes horror stories and movies succeed. Sequels and prequels are likely inevitable, though I don’t know if the premise supports an extended universe of lore and complications, but I’m willing to be wrong. Go ahead. Take hold.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Gray Matter (2023)
As a lifelong film fan, I’ve always been fascinated with the trials and tribulations of the many seasons of Project Greenlight. It began in 2001 as a contest shepherded by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and irritable producer Chris Moore to select the best submitted script and turn it into a movie. The process would also be documented at every stage by TV cameras for an HBO documentary series, but this is an organization defined by its chaos and mistakes, which make for spellbinding schadenfreude television and rather disappointing movies. Each season tried to retool. Season one winner Peter Jones was more a writer than a director and not fully ready when he was thrust to also direct his winning script, so season two had separate submissions to select a winning writer and a winning director to pair. Season three realized that the coming-of-age indies of the first two seasons (Stolen Summer, The Battle of Shaker Heights) didn’t exactly ignite the box-office, so the intent was a more commercial genre script, which ended up becoming the monster siege thriller, Feast. Season four, coming nearly ten years later, decided that the commercial script needed to come from a more trusted and studio-backed source rather than amateurs. That source: Pete Jones, now having become a co-writer to some Farrelly Brothers comedies. That season only sought to select a director, having now completely ditched the screenwriting aspect from the start of the contest, but the winning director ditched the approved script to make a middling comedy feature of his own short film (The Leisure Class). Now, many years later, HBO Max (or now just… Max, because somebody thinks “HBO” lacks brand value) has rebooted Project Greenlight, again, and has another more commercially-minded script to serve the eventual directing winner, this time among a team of ten female finalists. So after twenty years and five movies, what has Project Greenlight proven? Good TV doesn’t mean good movies.
Gray Matter will forever be known as “the Project Greenlight movie,” and if it wasn’t for that series, we wouldn’t be seeing this movie because it’s so generic and underwritten, which, having spent the day binging through the new Greenlight season, are the same problems that all the many producers were complaining about with the script. Well, you folks picked this script, right?
Aurora (Mia Isaac) is a 16-year-old who just wants to feel like a normal teenager. Her mom, Ayla (Jessica Frances Dukes), is afraid she won’t be able to defend herself in this scary world. They’re a mother-daughter psionic duo, exhibiting mind powers. After a tragedy away from home, Aurora finds herself in a weird complex run by Derek (Garret Dillahunt), a mysterious authority figure who says he’s trying to find all the psionics he can to help them better understand their unique abilities. Aurora suspects her captors don’t really have her best interest at heart.
That plot description above sounds like a hundred other YA-tinged stories, from The Darkest Minds to Firestarter to the X-Men TV show The Gifted, which also co-starred Dillahunt. It’s a fine starting point but the story and characters need to find ways to better personalize this formula, and that’s where Gray Matter falters. It’s all too surface-level, from the mother-daughter relationship, to the determination of Ayla, to the self-actualization of our teen. It’s not that you’ve seen it before, it’s that you’ve seen it before much better in so many other stories.
The story pieces are present that can be developed for a more engaging and character-centric sci-fi drama. There is potential here. I think more could be made about Ayla’s past connections to this psionic complex, but instead of being offered to co-chair it as an administrator, it would have been more interesting if she had been younger, a pregnant teen, and her unborn baby was the course of great speculation for the facility, especially being the child of two psionics. This would add an extra layer of urgency why Ayla felt she had to leave as well as why Aurora would be more coveted than other psionics. It could also easily explain why Aurora would be more powerful than any other psionic. It would also personalize the sacrifice of Ayla as well as her paranoia about the lengths they will be hunted. We needed more time with Ayla as a character because once the daughter gets kidnapped around the Act One break, she’s seen more in flashback and fantasy sequences than reality. If this is going to be the emotional core of the movie, then we need to flesh out the mother and the scenes between them. As demonstrated in the movie, Aurora is here to push her daughter, tell her she isn’t ready, then restrict her but also not really restrict her, as Aurora seems to sneak out every night to meet boys. If this woman is so paranoid, why is she alternating between being a strict gatekeeper and a free-range parent? It didn’t make sense. She’s keeping her child out of school and the public and constantly moving, but hey, go ahead and fraternize with these teenagers supposedly behind my back?
It’s also a shame that our protagonist is such a boring blank. The puberty/super power allegory has been prevalent for decades, but for a movie that literally spends so much of its time inside the mind of its main character, she’s unfortunately too underdeveloped and unexplored. She’s just kind of present for too many of her scenes rather than an active participant. This is partly from the nature of the script, where Aurora has to learn about her powers and the history of psionics, but why does the first act of the movie resort to repeating this exposition? We have one scene where mom is explaining powers and what’s at stake, and then twenty minutes later we have another scene of Derek explaining powers and what’s at stake. The biggest problem with Gray Matter is that its central character feels like an afterthought of a simple yet empty empowerment message. It’s about a young woman coming into her own power, externally and internally, but it’s also expressed under such generic terms. What do we know about Aurora? She wants a “normal life” but what does this constitute? Does she resent her mother’s rules? Has she rebelled in the past? What really animates her? What is her sense of purpose? I don’t know, which diminishes all the sequences of her running in terror, and that dominates the middle hour. I wish the script had started with her sneaking out, hanging out with these kids who consider her “that weird homeschool girl,” and then when things go wrong we have to learn with what we see rather than sitting through multiple people trying to explain the world and rules. It would be a better shock when things go wrong, and the added time would allow more breathing room to try and flesh out Aurora before she’s defined by her powers.
Another aspect that needed further re-examination was the nature of the psionic powers. The plot needed to better define the rules of these powers, which are quite varied. We begin with the powers mostly being telekinetic, the ability to move things with one’s mind. Then it jumps into telepathy, the ability to speak through one’s mind, then read the minds of others, then project mental structures, then working all the way to teleportation. There is a good scene where Derek is impressed by Aurora’s ability to hide her thoughts with a false setting construct, and I enjoyed him pointing out the giveaway details, like a character reading a book that is only ever the same page. That was a smart scene that better visualized the powers. However, the characters talk too broadly about the powers in sweeping proclamations. I think the movie could have improved had the story ditched more of the powers and settled down on one, with Aurora having the ability to manifest more than one power being a sign of her extraordinary identity.
As a low-budget genre movie, Gray Matter looks like a professional movie and has good actors doing their best. Debut director Meko Winbush has made a genre movie that looks practically indistinguishable from other disposable Hollywood genre thrillers, and maybe on a sliding scale, feeling and looking like a generic sci-fi thriller might be a success in the history of Project Greenlight. But I doubt all the many people who lent their labor and names to this project were hoping for it to be on par with a forgettable streaming entity eventually crushed by a library of content. Winbush presents enough visual polish that could lead her to future work, something that has also plagued many of the director winners from seasons past (Jason Mann, the season four winner, has one feature credit after The Leisure Class, serving as DP to a 2019 Slovenian movie). It’s hard to feel what exactly people could get passionate about with Gray Matter, and they just waited for a rewrite to supply all the missing emotional engagement and introspection and fun that was absent. Once again, the finished film ends up being a disappointing season finale to a train wreck of reality TV.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Sound of Freedom (2023)
The surprise of an otherwise underwhelming summer at the box-office, so far, has been an indie movie made for only a fraction of the bigger studio fare. Sound of Freedom is an action drama originally filmed in 2018 and even resorted to crowdfunding for post-production assistance, so you’d be curious as to what about this movie is making it the hot commodity in 2023? Well, the answer is both uplifting and also dispiriting, with good intentions running against possible bad faith. However, as an action drama chronicling the ills of human trafficking, it’s pretty mediocre genre stuff and indulges too often in wallowing in the danger of these innocent children under the guise of raising awareness of a pertinent problem that too many may unfortunately misconstrue.
Reportedly based on the experiences of Tim Ballard (Jim Caviezel), a former Homeland Security agent who was tasked with breaking up child-trafficking rings. He even goes undercover to bust skeevy mustachioed pedophiles looking to meet up with buyers, which causes obvious physiological distress and a strain on his marriage, although his wife seems saintly (played by Mira Sorvino, who is only here briefly to urge her man on). A Honduran brother and sister are sold through the front of a child beauty pageant into sex slavery, and after rescuing the brother, he’s determined to reunite the siblings. His efforts lead to Ballard quitting his government job and going to Columbia to try and rescue the children being held as commodities by gangs.
Allow me to be a little glib, dear reader, as I summarize what the plot of Sound of Freedom boils down to. Here goes: the movie quickly establishes sex trafficking as bad. Not hard. Got it. Our hero sees this and says, “This is very bad. I should do something.” The government says, “This is very bad. But what are you gonna do, you know?” Then our hero proclaims, “I can do something,” and the government brass says, “Well, we don’t know if you should,” and then our hero declares, “Well, I’m gonna!” Then he infiltrates the trafficking ring and reunites a little girl with her brother, and by the end we all learned a valuable lesson that human trafficking is very bad. The end. Now, yes, when you reduce any movie to its most essential plot points, it can feel reductive and like you’re missing something (Star Wars: farm boy leaves home, has adventure with hermit, saves princess), but there isn’t anything more to this Sound of Freedom than any of the Taken movies. It’s not exactly illuminating though it feels very sincere in its convictions.
As an action movie, there sure is a deficit of action to go on for a movie pushing two hours. There’s a climactic rescue but the majority of this movie is the overly simplified journey of trying to find one missing girl. Criminal procedures can be intriguing when there’s a real sense of continuity and progression, chasing down leads, connecting the dots, building the case. It can be invigorating when done well by smart people, like in 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty or the more recent true-life tale of exposing the murderous subject of 2022’s The Good Nurse. With Sound of Freedom, the problems are too easily overcome and the details are minimal. A lot of the breakthroughs are reliant upon chance.
Sound of Freedom feels like a professional action movie, with grimy cinematography and a mournful score, but there’s too little else going on here that is unknown to a general audience. It’s all pretty straightforward and yet sludgy with its overwrought pacing. This is a slow burn of a movie with an obvious end point manufactured for audience uplift, with Caviezel appearing as himself during the end credits to plead for others to donate to the cause and buy tickets for others for the “Uncle Tom’s Cabin of the twenty-first century,” which is what many are doing and donating them to others or passing them off to strangers.
There is one moment that I thought was unexpected, where reliable character actor Bill Camp (The Queen’s Gambit) plays an ally to assist Ballard in putting together a fake sex trafficking palace for pedophiles (this is much of the last act). Camp plays a businessman who indulged in the illicit excess of power until one fateful sexual encounter with a prostitute that he believed to be in her mid twenties. He’s sickened by the revelation that she was only fifteen years old, and this causes him to have a moral shakeup of his behavior, his complicity, and the entire system of wealthy and powerful people indulging in vices that leave others trapped in cycles of violence and degradation. It’s a potent moment that I wished that Camp’s character was the actual protagonist, a character with flaws trying to overcome a shameful past and do some measures to rectify change. That’s a more interesting starting point than a stoic yet familiar action hero who is defined by his dedicated calling to save the lives of children.
Nobody needs much persuasion to believe that sex trafficking is a definite bad thing, and yet the movie spends so much time wallowing in the grotesque terror of its captive children. It’s one thing to highlight the harsh reality of real-world trauma, but it’s another thing to keep going back for dramatic weight not provided through the rest of the movie. It’s hard to watch young children, gasping and crying, knowing they are likely minutes away from being abused, but why go back to this repeatedly? Did they think the audiences forgot what was happening? Because there is so little else to this movie, plot and character-wise, the frequent stops to watch kids in horror right before being abused are galling, and not just for the intended artistic purpose. Too much of Sound of Freedom is watching a grief-stricken dead-eyed Caviezel gravely intoning, “How can we let this happen?” intermingled with prolonged scenes of terrorized children. It feels too exploitative and gross. I recognized it as a cheap emotional cudgel, and one I didn’t appreciate considering the film’s intended message about the well-being of children.
Here’s where I think the movie’s good intentions run up against the reality of trafficking. The far majority of people who are victims of sex trafficking are not being abducted in public by foreign strangers, they’re not being grabbed at Target stores or somehow hidden in Wayfair furniture (this specific and moronic conspiracy theory was propagated by Ballard as well, sigh); instead, the common perpetrators are friends and family. Often it’s low-income parents with significant substance abuse issues who, in desperation, resort to the most cruel outcome to resolve their addiction. The far majority of trafficking victims are in their teens, seventy percent between 15-17. Victims are also often members of the LGBTQ community who have been kicked out of their homes, and some of these victims resort to trading sex for their own survival. Victims are often those seeking out relationships because of abuse and neglect at home and those coercive relationships then transforming into trafficking. The reality of human trafficking is a lot more complex. It is a worthy topic of imminent concern, but it’s not scary brown-skinned foreigners coming to steal your unsupervised babies. It’s not a cabal of Democrats wanting to drink the blood of children for its power (this specific and moronic conspiracy theory was propagated by Caviezel as well, sigh). The problem with crusading against sex trafficking is when your concept of the topic does not match the reality of the problem. It’s this sensationalized boogeyman, and not knowing the actual reality of the problem will only lead to misapplied solutions for a different reality. Also, the far majority of human trafficking is with labor trafficking, which will be much easier to succeed by lowering the age of child labor in certain states, so there’s that too.
By every objective measure, Sound of Freedom is a hit. The movie cost $14 million and has already grossed over $50 million at the U.S. box-office. While part of this is a campaign for people to buy tickets to then give away to others, the tickets are still purchased regardless of whether the seats are filled in their entirety. Many people have been inspired by the movie and its heroics, and far be it from me to deny them their uplift. I was let down by the deficiency of the find-and-rescue plot details and the sludgy pacing. I was especially put off by the excessive time spent exploiting the terror of abused children for unnecessary drama. Obviously the subject should make anyone feel uncomfortable, and sex trafficking is a very real evil that everyone should be able to condemn, but there needs to be more to this movie than reminding you that sex trafficking is very bad. I will credit Sound of Freedom with not depicting any specific pernicious QAnon conspiracies, but there’s significant overlap between that community and the audience for this. As a genre exercise, it’s kind of dull. As an expose on human trafficking, it has potential but skirts complexity for the finality of a feel-good mission with clear cut heroes and villains. There are obvious good intentions here wanting to highlight a worthy cause, and that might be enough for many viewers who can coast on the slick production values and overall stoicism.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Reality (2023)
Reality is a film experience where the devotion to verisimilitude is at the sacrifice of drama. The dialogue is reportedly taken one hundred percent from the FBI recordings of their questioning of the preposterously named Reality Winner, played by Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria). She works for a branch of U.S. national security and smuggled a classified document and submitted it to journalists to expose Russia’s intent to hack U.S. voting systems in the 2016 presidential election. The movie takes place more or less in real time as two FBI agents (Josh Hamilton, Marchant Davis) come to Reality’s small home in Augusta, Georgia, begin a search, and question her duties, behavior, and security clearances at her work. We’re inundated early with mundane details of asking about dogs and yoga class coverage while FBI agents are raiding Reality’s home, and the movie doesn’t allude to what everything is about until halfway through. Again, strictly sticking to the script of the government encounter limits creatively where and what the actors can do, so the overall inert feeling is, I suppose, part of the appeal for writer/director Tina Setter’s movie, based on her stage play. I think some people will read the protracted build-up as unsettling in its stubborn ordinariness, or that withholding the juicy drama only makes the collateral mystery and suspicions stronger. Reality is an interesting story told in a frustrating and gimmicky fashion that lessens its dramatic impact. If I just wanted to watch actors re-enact the transcripts, I’d seek out a documentary. I’m thinking of something like 2012’s Compliance, based on a true story and told over the course of one day, but it was harrowing and made me have to watch with my fingers covering my eyes because of the grueling drama that would not look away. There are a few interesting visual quirks here, like actors blinking out of a scene when they say words redacted from the transcript, but mostly it feels too stage bound. Sweeney comes unglued in pretty convincing manner as her different defenses and obfuscations crumble through the interrogation. Reality is a well-meaning movie meant to better frame one young woman’s extraordinary actions through an ordinary lens, but I kept getting antsy for the movie to drop its gimmick and accept that there was more inherent drama in this story than what was going unsaid while we discussed yoga and dogs.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Creed III (2023)
Now three films into its own rebirth, and nine films into the Rocky cinematic universe Sylvester Stallone begat in 1976, the story of Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan) fees confidant enough to leave behind Stallone. It’s still a formula-laden yet rousing sports movie, one where every turn will likely be predicted, but because of the conviction of the production, you can still cheer along with the familiar. This time Adonis is at the end of his career when an old face resurfaces with Damian “Dame” Anderson (Jonathan Majors), a childhood friend young Adonis looked up to who took the rap for Adonis’ fighting. He landed in prison and watched the journey of Adonis to being a world-championship boxer, which was Dame’s dream that was deferred. Adonis feels immense guilt and questions whether he’s earned his lot, and this trial of confidence and personal reckoning naturally comes down to an extensive pugilist battle, as all personal conflicts must. I laughed that Bianca (Tessa Thompson) was trying to make a point that not all conflict has to be decided by getting punched in the face, and ultimately that’s exactly where we’re headed. The requisite buildup, betrayal, training montage, and reclamation will be expected, but where the Creed franchise has separated itself was with its non-punching-in-the-face moments. I appreciate the added dimension of the characters and the allowances that make them more complex than simply cartoonish villains of the latter Rocky movies. Creed II humanized Ivan Drago Jr. to the point that I didn’t want either fighter to lose. I liked all the breather moments, from Adonis trying to raise a daughter with hearing impairments, to him reflecting and reminiscing with his forgotten friend like it was old times again, to the looming tragedy of saying goodbye to an ailing loved one (that deathbed scene was tremendously moving), and two men warring over hurt feelings of a friendship that meant so much and is trying to get beyond the pain of abandonment and guilt. When you devote that kind of attention to ensure that the drama matters, the boxing takes on added excitement. This is Jordan’s directorial debut and he does a fine job of helping his actors and providing them the space they need. He also finds some visually dynamic ways to film the boxing scenes and give them extra oomph (reportedly he based his approach off of anime and it honestly shows). Creed III may be more of the same but when the franchise devotes due attention to the small things as well as the big things, it’s still an elevated entertainment experience.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Peter Pan & Wendy (2023)
I’m not a big fan of the Peter Pan story. I think it has some meaty themes but the world of Neverland was never that interesting and I always found the characters to be more annoying and flimsy than enchanting and diverting. It also doesn’t help that there have been dozens and dozens of Pan adaptations; by existing in the public domain, one is guaranteed every few years, like 2015’s disastrous Pan by director Joe Wright (Cyrano) and 2020’s Wendy, the long-awaited follow-up from director Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild). The only aspect that had me even remotely intrigued in Disney’s new live-action version was the creative team behind it. Director/co-writer David Lowery is better known for sumptuous and deeply humanist indies like The Green Knight and Ain’t Them Body Saints, plus having Rooney Mara eat an entire pie for ten minutes of A Ghost Story (thus fulfilling my requirement to mention this baffling moment whenever the opportunity arises). He also happened to make the 2016 live-action remake for Pete’s Dragon, which was soulful and heartwarming and excellent. It’s in fact my favorite of all the recent Disney remakes and proof of what great artists can do when given enough creative latitude, from the parent studio as well as general audiences and their expectations. I think the overriding Disney demands won out, as Peter Pan & Wendy is a rather bland update that every so often gives a glimpse of a more introspective, thoughtful, and possibly better Pan.
You probably know the story already, as we follow the Darling children from their home in London all the way to the magical fantasy island of Neverland thanks to immortal child and would-be lovable scamp, Peter Pan (Alexander Molony). The kids can forever be kids on adventures with the fellow Lost Boys, battling against pirates led by Captain Hook (Jude Law). Except Wendy (Ever Anderson) starts to wonder whether growing up might be a necessity.
Considering the original Disney animated movie was released in the 1950s, there have been more than a few updates to modernize this tale, which have predictably riled the easily triggered culture warriors always looking for their next outrage. The offensive minority representation has obviously been altered, with actual indigenous actors portraying indigenous roles (no Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily in this go-round), and we have a brown-skinned Peter and Tinkerbell (Yara Shahidi), and the Lost Boys includes girls too in a throwaway explanation that’s entirely credible. Wendy also gets more empowered and has much more influence in the end events. I cannot understand the mentality of anyone that gets this upset over the skin color of fictional characters when it doesn’t alter the story. Who cares what the race of the actress playing Tinkerbell is, she’s a fairy. Why can’t there be darker-skinned fairies, hobbits, and mermaids? There are some exceptions; if Superman was played by a black actor, the world would view this overpowered alien in a completely different light, and that demands to be explored. However, most stories in a fantasy or sci-fi setting are not dependent on specific ethnicity, so why care? Of course, when the Tinkerbell character is such a waste, used solely for wordless reaction shots, it doesn’t matter what the race of the actress is when the character is this inconsequential.
One change I did like was bringing more of a personal fidelity between Peter and Captain Hook, beginning as close friends before falling out. The role of Hook has usually been modeled as an analogue for the Darling’s disapproving father and played by the same actor for the obvious parallels (in this iteration, Alan Tudyk). With Lowery’s version, Hook began as simply James, a Lost Boy who was Peter’s BFF until James started to miss his mother. This cherishing of the past rather than out-rightly rejecting it caused a wedge between the two friends, and James returned home only to eventually return back to Neverland as a grown man. I don’t know if the adult James was seeking out the comfort of his old friend and the familiar or if he was seeking out Peter for the sake of vengeance, blaming him for the years of time he lost and missing the death of his mother. Perhaps Peter’s harsh rejection of his grieving friend sent him into a tailspin. This painful past, when it starts to break through the cracks of family spectacle, can be captivating. Characters who are unable to articulate their loss but they feel it, as if there’s something just below the surface that they know isn’t right in all these redundant clashes. Can these characters even die? There are several that come back from certain demise. There are exchanges where Peter and Hook feel like they’re on auto-pilot, mechanically giving into the demands of a universe keeping its players in tidy and conforming roles. There’s a slight danger when the movie hits these little bumps, like characters becoming aware of more than what they’re used to. It’s like they’re breaking free of the Matrix to briefly realize how they’re being manipulated by fate before succumbing back to it.
These occasional philosophical glimpses are what kept me going, hoping that somehow the movie would rise above its familiarity into something different and more exciting. I don’t mean adult or darker, though there are clear horror routes one could take with the story of Peter Pan. Pete’s Dragon wasn’t a particularly complex story by any means but it channeled a clear and heartfelt tone and vision, and was executed at a high level to be appealing to all ages. I was hoping for something the same here, but the muck of the Peter Pan expectations ultimately gets the best of Lowery and his team. I liked the idea that Wendy may not be the first Wendy to be lured to Neverland to be the house mother for these wayward children. I liked the idea that Peter Pan could be the real villain of this realm, holding children hostage more or less through their rejection of growing up, and how resentful and remorseful that can make someone when they are cut out of their former life. I liked the idea of James/Hook possibly maybe even being a distant relative of the Darlings and what that could do for their relationship and perspectives meeting. I liked the idea of characters falling into patterns but not able to comprehend why they’re being manipulated. There’s a more penetrating movie here just on the peripheral and it pokes through but only occasionally. It’s frustrating to watch because it feels like uncovering artifacts of an older, more arresting screenplay that has, over the course of numerous rewrites and studio intervention, been diluted. The Peter Pan movie we get in 2023 is fine with some diverting visuals, but it’s a shadow of what could have been had Lowery been allowed to explore more of his creative impulses.
The movie is not without its charms and beauty, and for 106 minutes you can watch it without investing too much of your emotions. Law (Fantastic Beasts) is easily the best part of the movie, really enjoying the snarl of his over-the-top villain but finding opportunities for nuance to showcase his lingering vulnerabilities. Hook comes across like a bigger kid hurt and lashing out, and there’s tragedy to that that Law is able to tap while also playing into the foppish and slapstick comedy. I adored Jim Gaffigan (Linoleum) as Smee and was amused that he becomes the moral center for the pirates, speaking out when he fears they’re crossing a line. The natural scenery has a luscious storybook quality to it, and the mossy ruins made me think of Lowery’s Green Knight and its many visual pleasures. I enjoyed the presentation and physics of a below deck sword fight while the ship is rotating in the air. It made me think of Inception’s famous gravity-defying hallway fight, in a good way. I enjoyed how active the cinematography was, swooping and swirling with the energy of a child radically at play, and the montages of characters feeling the full power of happy memories had a downright ethereal quality of demonstrating a fuller life.
If you’re hungry for a live-action Peter Pan movie, then try the 2003 version with a deliciously maniacal Jason Isaacs (Mass) as Captain Hook. If you’re looking for a Peter Pan that goes beyond the bounds of the same old story, try Steven Spielberg’s Hook, a touchstone of many Millennial childhoods. Or check out the 1922 silent era Peter Pan. There is no shortage of Pan adaptations to choose from, so there’s a Pan for every occasion, and I’m sure there will be fans of this new live-action update as well. I found it a little too bland. It’s certainly better than the recent Pinocchio, but that itself is not reason enough to watch this. Peter Pan & Wendy offers too little to distinguish it from its predecessors, so it becomes yet another Pan adaptation that fails to fully take flight.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
In the 13 ensuing years since James Cameron’s smash hit Avatar, we’ve debated whether or not the collective consciousness has simply moved on and forgotten what was, at one point, the highest-grossing movie of all time. What cultural dent had it made? Are there really still fans? Was it a fad of the new 3-D, itself already dissipated? Does anyone really want three or four sequels? Then Avatar: The Way of Water was released in late 2022 and it didn’t do as well as its mighty predecessor. Instead of being the highest-grossing movie ever, it’s only the third highest-grossing movie ever with a paltry $2.3 billion worldwide (how can the man even sleep at night?). It’s a lot of the same, both in its big feelings, awe-inducing visuals, and its resurrection of characters, scenarios, and conflicts of before, so you’ll likely find yourself reliving your own 2009 Avatar reaction.
Cameron’s long-awaited follow-up returns to the alien word of Pandora where our Marine-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) has raised a large blended family with his Na’vi partner, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana, given little to do but cry this time). The first hour of this three-hour blockbuster is establishing the family dynamic with the different kids, including adopted daughter who is… somehow… the daughter of the deceased scientist Grace (both Sigourney Weaver) as well as the human child nicknamed Spider who is the biological son of Quaritch (Stephen Lang), our deceased villain. Nobody seems to stay dead in this series as Quaritch concocted his own backup plan in case of his untimely demise. He transferred his consciousness into a tank-born avatar, and this new Na’vi Quaritch has his own team of Marines in blue-skinned Na’vi bodies. They’re heading back to Pandora for some out-of-body vengeance, and thanks to their genetics, they seem to get a pass from the natural environment of Pandora mistaking them as native.
There’s a lot of set up here, and the second hour introduces us to the coastal community, and it becomes another formula of the outsiders learning the rules and culture of the new setting and integrating, turning enemies into friends, gaining honor, etc. It’s within this second hour that the big environmental message coalesces around whaling, with one Sully son bonding with an alien whale Free Willy-style. There’s a whole hunt sequence that poaches a mother and her calf that’s quite upsetting. The parallels are obvious but subtlety is not exactly one of the storytelling options in the Avatar universe. This is a broad canvas in the biggest sense, so every message will be spelled out very finely and underlined, with character voicing obvious themes and villains practically twirling space mustaches. And that’s okay. The final hour is an action-packed showdown bringing all the characters to account and forcing Jake to face off once again with his old commander.
The visual immersion is outstanding and the real reason to sit still during all three hours of Way of Water. The Oscar-winning visual effects are transcendent, and the extended sequences underwater really captivate and achieve the sense of natural awe Cameron aspires for. It is an exceedingly pretty movie to watch, and the level of high-definition detail is astounding. There’s a tangible realism here even when it’s entirely gangly CGI characters. At no point does it feel like an empty green screen stage or an over-exposed cartoon. The world of Pandora is still interesting and worth exploring, and the coastal aliens with their evolutionary differences makes me excited to explore other corners and communities of this alien world. The story works, and the payoffs work, and each of the Sully kids has a moment to shine, though I kept confusing the two older brothers (where did one of these kids learn to say “bro” every other word?). It’s a bit strange to see and hear Weaver in a preteen alien’s body, but that disconnect is part of the point, as the character feels like a foreigner searching for meaning. Considering the decade-plus delay, the huge scope, and setting up potentially three other movies, I’m impressed that Way of Water even works as well as it does as a sequel. I was able to re-acclimate pretty easily in that first hour.
It’s not revolutionary storytelling but not every movie need be. It follows a familiar formula but puts in the work to make the action meaningful and connected to character and for the emotional beats to resonate. I thought the upside-down sinking military vessel had some striking, terrifying Poseidon Adventure-esque visuals, and the sequence was rooted in the family trying to save one another. With so many moving pieces and characters, the plot can be overburdened and redundant at times (the Sully kids get kidnapped so often they might as well save time and tie themselves up early) but even at three hours it doesn’t feel slow or wasteful. There is a sense of repetition in bringing back so many of the same faces, like literally rehashing the same villains. I wish more consideration was given to the new Quaritch and his own existential journey of the self. Just because you have the brain of this dead evil guy, do you have to follow in his doomed path? That could have been a really intriguing and profound character journey, the cloned Marines bred to be weapons who decide their own identities. That could have sufficed as the entire movie for me. The messages are heavy-handed but effective, though Pandora already had a natural resource that Earth wanted to exploit so I didn’t think we needed a second natural resource that essentially functions as immortality juice. At this point, will the third movie introduce ANOTHER magical resource that cures cancer? Likewise, I hope the next movie doesn’t find us yet another Quaritch (a twin brother!) looking for further score-settling. The ending sets up a larger confrontation with Earth’s corporate elite that will come about with the ensuing sequels, though I would have thought since Way of Water makes a big leap forward in time that Earth’s powerful forces would have already marshaled their unhappy response to being kicked out in the original movie.
Cameron has an innate blockbuster sensibility and storytelling structure; the man just knows how to tell rousing big screen adventures like few others. I didn’t see Way of Water in theaters but I won’t make the same mistake with the many Avatar sequels that will dominates the 2020s. It’s a bit hokey though deeply sincere, and Cameron proves yet again that he should not be doubted on big stages of his own creation. It might take the domestic gross of a small country to make these sci-fi epics of his, but the man delivers like few in the rarefied field of dependable blockbuster artists. There’s going to be an Avatar sequel every two years, so this universe won’t go extinct anytime soon, and I’ll be there waiting too.
Nate’s Grade: B
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