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Don’t Look Up (2021)
A scorched Earth satire that flirts with a literal scorched Earth, Don’t Look Up is writer/director Adam McKay’s star-studded condemnation of everything stupid and myopic in media, politics, and pop culture. Jennifer Lawrence plays a doctoral student who discovers a comet heading for direct cataclysmic impact with Earth, and she and her astronomy mentor (Leonardo DiCaprio) are trying to sound the alarm but nobody seems to be listening. Not the president (Meryl Streep) and her inept chief of staff/son (Jonah Hill). Not the greedy CEO (Mark Rylance) of a tech company. Not the media where morning TV co-hosts (Cate Blanchett, Tyler Perry) are more compelled by music star breakups than pressing science. It makes a person want to stand up and scream about priorities, and that’s McKay’s point, one that will be bludgeoned again and again. This movie is animated with seething rage about the state of the world and the cowardice about facing obvious problems head-on. It’s fit as a climate change allegory but COVID-19 or any scientific crisis could be applied as well. It’s about choosing ignorance and greed, about deferring to our worst instincts, and those in power who profit from inaction. I laughed at several points, some of it good cackling, and the movie is dark to its bitter end. This is the bleakest movie of McKay’s foray into his more sober, activist movie-making (The Big Short, Vice). It’s less Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, exploring the foibles of humans reconciling their last moments of existence, and more Idiocracy, where there is a lone voice of reason and the rest of the population are aggravating morons that refuse to accept reality even if it literally means just looking up with their own eyes. In some ways, the dark laughter the movie inspires is cathartic after years of COVID denials and mask tirades and horse medicine. The satire is bracingly blunt but also one joke on repeat. If you’re the right audience, that one joke will be sufficient. I don’t think the movie quite achieves the poignancy it’s aiming for by the end of its 138 minutes, but the anger is veritably felt. Don’t Look Up wants us to save the world before it’s too late, though the people that need to see the movie the most will be the ones fastest to dismiss it. Still, congrats to McKay for making a movie this depressing and relevant for the holidays.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)
No better or no worse than the original, this less than fantastic follow-up to the cruddy 2005 superhero dysfunctional family melodrama ups the apocalyptic ante with the emergence of the powerful Silver Surfer, the herald for a cosmic cloud, yes cloud, that consumes the life forms of planets. The special effects run the gamut from fake and awful to passable, but what ultimately kills this movie is how little substance there is. It’s lightweight, shallow, and more interested in making the kids giggle. Example: The Human Torch, after touching the Surfer, can now switch powers with any of the members after they touch him. The Thing, covered in spongy orange rock, is lamenting his state but finds solace in his relationship with a blind woman. The Human Torch asks what Mr. Rock Dude what would do if he had but a few moments left in this world. Now, I’m thinking that the Human Torch is going to swap places with his buddy so that The Thing can enjoy even one night as a regular flesh-and-blood human being with his sweetheart. Maybe they could even knock boots without her getting serious rug burn. But no, the movie does nothing and just moves along because it doesn’t have the scope, the interest, or even the time to flirt with anything outside its limited plot. The storyline, what little there is, is predictable from beginning to end and the action sequences, while expanded from the first film, still fall far short of eliciting tension or tickling the imagination. I swear the only reason the flying jet thing is introduced was to sell toys. You have a bunch of people with unique super powers; the least the script could do is think of exciting things to do.
Nate’s Grade: C
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