FilM

All a blur

Steven Spielberg goes for broke but leaves you bleary-eyed in a bad way with Ready Player One, based on the very popular Ernest Cline novel. The film is so full of pop culture references that it doesn’t so much deliver them as visually vomit them into your face.

Rather than relishing the opportunity for ’80s nostalgia, Spielberg opts for whiplash pacing and miscasting, squandering the chance to allow any of the fun elements to really sink in. They pass by so fast, the film comes off as more of an exercise for speed trivia aptitude than an attempt at a true narrative.

The futuristic storyline involves something called the OASIS, a virtual reality world that is not only a pastime, but a total escape from real-world poverty and pollution. Wade (Tie Sheridan) lives in a place called the Stacks, basically manufactured homes piled on top of each other, and he whiles away many hours in the OASIS as his alter ego/avatar Parzival.

Halliday (Mark Rylance), the inventor of the OASIS, dies, and in a plot twist quite similar to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, devises a way for somebody to win control of the OASIS. He plants keys throughout the virtual world, and the one who finds all of the keys first gets the whole damn thing.

As soon as Wade/Parzival puts on his VR goggles and jumps into the OASIS, the trivia easter eggs start flying. The opening race scene set in a shapeshifting New York is a true winner, with Parzival trying to evade King Kong in his Back to the Future DeLorean. What follows are a lot of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameos by the likes of Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Chucky, T. Rex and Batman. Scoring the film’s most prominent cameo is the Iron Giant, which is admittedly super cool.

In an ingenious sequence, Parzival and his virtual friends wind up in the Overlook Hotel from The Shining, contending with the bloody elevator, the creepy twins and the decomposing old lady. Alas, we don’t see Jack Nicholson—just his ax.

The sequences that work are far outweighed by passages that become a blur as they race by, as the movie often refuses to take a breath. Making matters worse, the reality world is populated by characters more cartoonish than the video game avatars.

The usually reliable Ben Mendelsohn seems lost as Sorrento, a former Halliday employee bent on OASIS domination. Olivia Cooke fails to distinguish herself as rebel Samantha (Art3mis in the OASIS), and Sheridan is bland.

Rylance, playing multiple ages, comes off as a bit goofy, and his casting as Halliday makes little to no sense. In the early stages of production, it was rumored that Spielberg was courting the original Wonka, Gene Wilder, before he passed away. Since the movie deeply references the ’80s, casting somebody like Michael J. Fox, Henry Thomas, Tom Cruise or Kevin Bacon— true ’80s icons—could’ve been a lot of fun. Rylance seems out of place.

The film holds together OK enough for its first three quarters but ultimately falls apart in its final act, to an extent that’s actually boring and makes little sense.

The soundtrack sounds like somebody trying to ape John Williams. For only the third time in his moviemaking career, Spielberg turns to another composer, Alan Silvestri, to score one of his films. The result lacks originality and is missing that catchy, triumphant-yet-somehow-not-distracting vibe that Williams always seems to pull off. It plays like Williams-Lite.

I’ve made no secret of my love for Spielberg. Jaws is, and will probably always be, my all-time favorite movie, and many other Spielberg films reside near the top my list. Ready Player One definitely belongs in the bottom half of his massive cinematic output. Perhaps it coming to us a mere few months after his last movie—the far superior The Post—is a sign that his plate was too full to make Ready Player One a winner. It’s a visual rush job. Ω

“There’s no way for me to scare anyone while Trump is president of the United States.”

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4Black Panther Scoring director Ryan Coogler to helm Marvel’s latest proves to be a major triumph. His entry into the Marvel universe is a majestic, full-bodied, exhilarating treatment of the African king title character with the crazy cool suit (Chadwick Boseman). This is Coogler’s third collaboration with actor Michael B. Jordan, who brings a fully fleshed, complicated villain to the screen in Erik Killmonger. Man, you just have to be bad with that last name. The pre-opening credit scene involves Black Panther’s predecessor father having a confrontation in 1992 Oakland, California. A major event takes place as some kids playing basketball look on. It turns out to be one of the more brilliant and heart-wrenching setups for a Marvel movie character yet. The action cuts to present day, where Black Panther/T’Challa is dealing with the passing of his father due to an event that took place in Captain America: Civil War (massive credit to the producers and screenwriters who interlink these films together so well). He’s to become king but must pass through a ritual with some risk involved. He overcomes the obstacles, gets his throne and prepares for his rule. His kingdom doesn’t get a moment to breathe before trouble ensues. In London, Killmonger comes across an ancient weapon forged in Wakanda, Black Panther’s homeland. It’s made from Vibranium, a precious resource that fuels much of Wakanda’s advanced technology, including the Black Panther suits. With the help of Wakanda enemy Klaue (Andy Serkis acting with his real face as opposed to a motion-capture suit), Killmonger obtains the weapon, threatening world stability. The story is told with a stunning level of social relevance for a superhero film, especially when it comes to Killmonger’s motives. He’s got some big reasons for having gone bad, and they make him a far more sympathetic character than, say, Loki from Thor.

3A Fantastic Woman Transgender actress Daniela Vega delivers a great performance in an OK film from Chilean director Sebastian Leloir. She plays Marina, a club singer at night and waitress by day who has a boyfriend twice her age in Orlando (Francisco Reyes). After celebrating her birthday, Orlando falls ill and dies, leaving Marina to deal with his family and authorities. Marina is persecuted by Orlando’s family, questioned by detectives about the circumstances of Orlando’s death and restricted from attending his wake and funeral. The story never really takes hold. Plotting for the film is routine and unimaginative, but some fantasy sequences and a couple of musical numbers give Vega a nice opportunity to shine. She keeps the movie moving forward when the story lags. Lelio has a few stylistic flourishes in the film, and it’s worth seeing. (It just won Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars.) See it for Vega, who takes the film to higher levels.

3Love, Simon Nick Robinson delivers a breakthrough performance as the title character in Love, Simon, a sweet throwback high school comedy about a gay teen who, thanks to email and social networking, might have to come out in a way that doesn’t jibe with his personal schedule. The film feels a bit generic at times, but, by the time the movie plays out, some of the formulaic plot mechanics are mostly forgivable because, well, this movie is pretty damned adorable in the end. Based on the Becky Albertalli novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda—which, in my opinion, would’ve been a much better movie title—the screenplay by Elizabeth Berger and Isaac Aptaker scores enough original and sincere notes to earn smiles and tears. Simon finds out that somebody at his high school is closeted gay thanks to a social media post. Because he’s in the same predicament, Simon creates a Gmail account, contacts the student, and begins a virtual pen pal relationship. Over the course of the emails, Simon falls in love—or, you know, the high school version of love—with the other anonymous student, constantly scanning his classmates for clues to his identity. Those classmates include best friend Leah (Katherine Langford), who may or may not have a crush on him, new girl in school Abby (Alexandra Shipp), who is the crush of other buddy Nick (Jorge Lendeborg, Jr.), and Martin (Logan Miller), the resident class clown/ annoying guy. All of these characters are enjoyable with the exception of Miller’s, who plays the “annoying guy” role so well that he becomes genuinely, unappealingly annoying. Director Greg Berlanti balances Simon’s school life with a heartwarming, beautifully depicted family life. Jennifer Garner, an underrated actress, is awesome as The Best Mom … Ever, while Josh Duhamel is equally terrific as Simon’s goofy, trying-to-be-cool dad. Talitha Bateman rounds out the family as the little sister who wants to be a cook.

1Pacific Rim: Uprising While the original Pacific Rimhad some definite problems, its sequel is a big, stupid, worthless, son-of-a-bitching waste of time. Uprising takes an original idea—big Kaiju monsters fighting man-made robots—from director/creator Guillermo del Toro. That Del Toro idea resulted in an OK first movie in Pacific Rim, with great elements but troublesome issues (robots/monsters, good … people, bad). Uprising takes that original idea and turns it into something akin to, or perhaps even worse than, the average Transformers movie. It’s a watereddown, cheap joke of a film that obliterates anything good del Toro started. Without del Toro directing—he dumped out a few years back to assume a producer’s role—the film loses all sense of style and artistic direction. Steven S. DeKnight, who has directed such TV shows as Smallville and Daredevil, makes his feature-film-directing debut with something that screams “Maybe I should’ve stuck with the TV gigs!” Replacing Charlie Hunnam as the original franchise star, John Boyega jumps headlong into this mess as Jake Pentecost, son of Stacker Pentecost, played by Idris Elba in the first movie. Jake is a former Jaeger (Giant Robot) pilot who, after the death of his dad and a bad Jaeger experience, has taken to partying and trading black market hot sauce in a post-Kaiju world. While Elba’s character supposedly closed off the monsters from our world, they find a way back (of course). This results in subpar CGI battles and lousy performances all around.

1A Wrinkle in Time A beloved novel gets absolutely slaughtered with A Wrinkle in Time, a sure contender for one of 2018’s worst movies, and an embarrassment for the great talents involved. Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 novel was adapted by Disney once before with an also lousy TV movie back in 2003. The book has been bouncing around Hollywood for decades, with many attempts to bring it to the big screen being aborted. It’s a sad, sad thing that Disney finally took the plunge, dropped over $100 million and came up with this mess. Compounding the sadness is that it’s directed by Ava DuVernay, who made the excellent Martin Luther King, Jr., biopic Selma. While that film had a cohesive vision, excellent technical credits and powerhouse acting all around, her new film has none of these things. It’s total chaos on screen. Crackpot-yet-dreamy scientist Mr. Murry (Chris Pine) is obsessed with interstellar travel, and believes that wrinkles in time could be used to travel light years through space. It’s never really established what he wants to achieve through such travel, but his obsession eventually leads to his disappearance for four years. He apparently travels through the universe with no real way to get home, and no real sense of purpose. His kids, led by Storm Reid, try to find him with a trio of strange folks played by Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling who look totally clueless.