An Ad That Makes an Offer You Can't Refuse

When thinking of an indie movie, you might picture a story that takes a more honest approach to life, with maybe a little bit of lighthearted quirkiness added to make you feel like you're watching something unique.  They are not similar to the more mainstream films, where the "suspension of disbelief" is more fitting.  But, once in an enchanting while, an independent film will appear and trapeze on the line that separates the everyday from the miraculous.

Colin Trevorrow's time-travel comedy, Safety Not Guaranteed, stays perfectly balanced on that line.  It's a story about being given the opportunity for second chances when your life doesn't work out in your favor.  With its fantastical ideas grounded in reality, the film carries a whimsical uplift that shows that even an average, uneventful life can stumble upon something that was only possible in your imagination.

Darius Britt (Aubrey Plaza) is an unhappy intern at a Seattle magazine.  When the publication has the thought to do a story based on an ad by an anonymous person saying he can go back in time, Darius, fellow intern Arnau (Karan Soni) and Jeff (Jake M. Johnson), a writer at the magazine, decide to take the story.  Once they find the ad contributor, a loner named Kenneth Calloway (Mark Duplass), Darius volunteers to follow him so she can get information for the article.  Once he trusts her with his findings for time travel, Mark allows Darius to help him with his mission.  After they start spending some time together, she begins to suspect Mark might not be crazy after all.

Aubrey Plaza's character is introduced to us as a rather anti-social individual, admitting and showing to us that she was never an engaging person at high school parties, and stayed up all night studying in college while her roommate made out with her boyfriend in the background.  She even bombs a job interview because of her inability to be an extrovert.  But, she is a sympathetic character because of that, since many of us, at some point, might have had some trouble interacting with others, so we are able to connect with her on a certain level.  It's fascinating to watch her become Duplass' loyal confidante, since her interactions with him encourage her to become more of an open person, and this causes him to become more comfortable with himself.  They help each other in the long run.  She trades her mad-at-the-world expression for a willingness to share her secrets, and behind her sourpuss personality hides a painful childhood.  Through subtle character development, Darius goes from being a wallflower at parties, to practicing shooting and stealing equipment with Kenneth to help build his time travel machine.

Mark Duplass' character is one who can be described as the ultimate dreamer.  He's like that one neighbor of yours that is closed off from everyone, but is someone you can't resist to learn more about.  His powerful determination in what he is doing has us asking throughout the film, "Is he crazy, or not?"  We hope that he's not because he has such a passion, conviction and reason for what he does, that we want him to have his breakthrough. He almost has the mentality of a child who's holding onto an outlandish dream, even when others don't believe in him.  But, as it turns out, although he appears and acts like an eccentric scientist, he knows what he's talking about.  There are some clever touches to his character, such as having him and Darius meet at a high school football game to chat about their project goals.  This background helps to reinforce his yearning to go back to his high school years and win the heart of the girl he secretly loved.

Derek Connolly's screenplay lives on the need that all people possess of wanting to step into a machine to go back in time to fix something in order to improve their lives in the future and to get rid of regrets.  While we can't do anything of the sort in real life, what makes the two main characters so moving is that they actually do something to meet that need.  But, visiting the past by building a time machine is not a method used by all of the characters.  Jeff uses the trip to meet up with a girl from his teenage years who he longs to reconnect with, so he visits the past by simply showing up on her doorstep.  The story also embraces the universal theme of grabbing at the opportunities that come at the most thrilling times in your life, as in a subplot where Jeff teaches Arnau how to pick up women.

Director Colin Trevorrow keeps a consistent tone throughout the film, shifting comfortably between the cheerful moments, like the amusing first meeting between Darius and Kenneth, and the rather darker moments, such as a revelation for Kenneth's character in the second half of the movie.  Trevorrow gives the relationship between the two leads the time to expand, allowing their characters to mature and open up to each other, and it all leads to an astonishing conclusion.  This film is an original little treasure on celluloid that has emerged from the clutter of the summer movie releases.  See it, and it will resonate with you.  It's guaranteed.

Final grade: A

So, I Guess Visiting a Museum is Out of the Question?

When traveling through exotic locales, you want to absorb as much as you can of the sights and sounds of whatever place you're visiting.  You want to spend time trying out the cuisine, gazing at historical sites and getting lost for a day in the enchanting atmosphere of a foreign land.  It's difficult to think of tourists wanting to visit the site of a disaster, and yet, that's exactly what a group of young twenty-somethings decide to do.

In director Bradley Parker's Chernobyl Diaries, a new horror film that's severely lacking in horror, what should have been an eerie setting for a good fright is botched by empty-headed characters and a screenplay lacking in creativity.  Chernobyl spewed radiation, and this movie radiates a sense of cheating the audience out of the fun of rocketing out of your seat from a zing of terror.  This is an unfortunate misstep for Oren Peli, the scare-master behind the Paranormal Activity series, who was a producer and writer for this film.

While traveling through Europe, Chris (Jesse McCartney), decides to take his girlfriend, Natalie (Olivia Taylor Dudley) and their friend, Amanda (Devin Kelley), to visit his brother, Paul (Jonathan Sadowski), before heading to Moscow to propose to Natalie.  Once they get to Chris's home, he suggests that they do some "extreme tourism" (I never knew there was such a thing) in the abandoned town of Prypiat, which is next to the Chernobyl nuclear site.  The four of them meet their tour guide, Uri (Dimitri Diatchenko), and two other tourists named Zoe (Ingrid Bolso Berdal) and Michael (Nathan Phillips).  After sneaking into Prypiat and spending the day there, they return to their car, only to find that it won't start (of course).  Now, the group will have to stay in Chernobyl until they can get help, and will also realize that the town might not be deserted after all, but a home for mutants deformed by the radiation.

There isn't any point in talking about each character, since they are all daft to a full degree.  They foolishly go into the tour guide's van, which is so sketchy-looking that it's surprising he doesn't offer them any candy while wearing an evil smirk on his face.  All of the characters make so many irrational decisions that it's downright baffling, and it gets to the point where you can't help but think, "They deserve what they get for not having an ounce of common sense." What's worse about these characters is that you don't learn anything about them, so you end up not having any care for them.  All of them are completely interchangeable with other brainless teenagers you see in many horror films.  The most nagging question for this group is, "How does visiting Chernobyl constitute as a fun idea?"  These characters didn't think it all through, obviously.

Except for one good scare, which afterwards seems rather silly, there isn't anything to be frightened about.  We only get very brief glimpses of the monsters.  We only see them from a distance, as a blur or in a one-second close-up as the camera is frantically moving.  Of course, it's always what you don't see is what's scary.  But, the way how the filmmakers build it up, you still think they would give you some sort of payoff in the end.  Well, they don't.  It's all a big rip-off.  From what you do see, the mutants don't look that fearsome anyway.  They mostly look like the monsters from I Am Legend.

The only two things that deserve a little bit of praise are the cinematography, by Morten Soborg, and the atmospherics.  The camerawork uses many long takes to deliver a more realistic and unsettling approach to what we see on film.  There are some neat tricks with the camera and its flows of continuous motion, such as it following the characters while panning in and out of different points of focus, and rotating around the inside of the van as the group converses.  The dreariness of the setting, with its abandoned buildings and lifelessness of the surrounding nature, carry the tragic history of Chernobyl.

Despite the very few noteworthy aspects of the film, the screenplay by Oren Peli, Carey Van Dyke and Shane Van Dyke and direction by Bradley Parker don't do anything to make this a memorable horror story. We aren't given any reasons why we should like the characters, and they have as much depth as a kiddie pool.  They don't do anything but run, scream, cry and make brainless decisions, and without any scares worth talking about, Chernobyl Diaries is near worthless.  The tour group made the foolish choice of visiting Chernobyl.  But don't follow their example, and skip this European trip.

Final grade: D

Trying to Solve the Mystery of Life, and Encountering Extraterrestrial Life

The inventive and untamed imagination of Ridley Scott brought forth a landmark in science fiction, and cinema in general, with his 1979 deep-space creature feature Alien.  Such a simple concept of space travelers being stalked by a dreadfully disgusting monster had a certain complexity under the surface of its basic premise. Its bloody share of memory-searing imagery leaves viewers in a paralyzed state of fear, no matter how many times you watch the film.  We all know there isn't any coming back from the first time you watch the Chestburster scene.  Such is the power of the director's unwavering eye for the genre.

The first film in the Alien mythology was Scott's only one as a director.  Three decades later, he displays that his extended time away from the franchise has not tarnished his adventurous spirit for the sci-fi realm.  Just like in Alien, Scott's sort-of-prequel Prometheus has the director tapping back into the dangers and harsh consequences that the characters' new discoveries can bring to their futures, as well as diving into the enigma of life's beginnings.

In the late 21st century, a group of explorers, while searching through remains of ancient civilizations, discover a star map that has the potential to lead them to a distant moon that could tell them the secrets of humanity's creation.  Led by mission director Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), archeologists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), and an android named David (Michael Fassbender), the team flies on the space vessel Prometheus to a distant moon to begin its scientific search.  After some time in their new environment, the group's findings begin to pose some deadly threats that could very well bring an end not only to them, but to Earth as well.

Much like the other Alien films, Ridley Scott calls in a female character with smarts and strength who shows the bravery and capability of going through with a perilous journey for the pursuit of near-unattainable facts of humanity's existence.  Noomi Rapace fills that role just as Sigourney Weaver did when she played Ellen Ripley in the previous installments.  She has a hunger for knowledge, but a sense of selflessness for her fellow crew members.  Being the more religious individual in her group, the character of Shaw is an interesting combination of faith and science. Shaw has quick decision-making skills when it comes to choosing what is best for her team and for herself.  Because of Rapace's petite appearance, however, she doesn't come off being as physically strong as Weaver was when she battled the aliens.  But, where Rapace is different from Weaver in physicality, they both match in scientific intelligence.

If Shaw is in this quest for the good of humanity, Charlize Theron's character is in it for her cooperate greed.  Theron has an aptitude for playing characters who looks as if they are cold to the touch.  She plays Vickers' character as a seemingly-emotionless ice queen with a her-way-or-the-highway attitude.  Right away, she is seen as a no-nonsense type of woman, staring into the camera with a hard, concentrated look as she does a series of push-ups after being in stasis for the duration of the ship's travel.  She is another tough female character, much like Shaw, but her plans for the voyage are highly questionable, and might not be in everyone's favor.

Michael Fassbender is an outstanding addition to the Alien franchise as the android, David.  He has an insatiable curiosity of the foreign moon and the humans that he surrounds himself with.  Much like Shaw, he has a want for learning new things, which is seen first towards the beginning when he's thoroughly studying the languages of lost civilizations.  Because he is an android and doesn't have any emotions, we have to listen to his speech, look at his facial expressions and pay attention to how he operates in order to understand why he does what he does.  His desire to learn about the world and those around him makes him almost like a human, driven by the want to discover more.

On most occasions, 3D doesn't do anything to enrich the viewing experience.  In the case of Prometheus, however, the extra dimension works in its favor.  The appearance of outer space, the moon the crew visits and the futuristic construction inside and outside the spaceship all have a justified use for 3D because there are a lot of visuals to absorb.  Since the film is science fiction and concerns space travel and visiting far-away places, it helped me recall the first time I saw Avatar and how this movie-making technology assisted in telling the story.  Instead of having random things reach out to the audience, the 3D adds more depth and life to what's on screen, using wonderful image quality to enhance the special effects.

With cinematography by Dariusz Wolski, the opening scene offers some sumptuous shots as the camera glides over landscapes of Earth from thousands of years ago.  Thanks to the 3D, the images are clear and look beautifully realistic, as if we’re seeing them as they are in the natural world.  Some of the best shots of when the crew is on the moon are the long shots, since we are able to see a small group of people positioned in a vast, unknown land.  The views we are given of space, the planets and stars have the usual grandness that we see in shots that are in the cosmos.  The cinematography, from the low angle shot of the Prometheus spaceship landing on the moon, to the long shot of the crew trying to outrun a sandstorm, have a splendor in scope that help make science fiction movies magical.

In the fun tradition of the previous Alien films, there are certain scenes in the film that make you squirm, including Shaw being driven to perform a harrowing surgery on herself in order to save her life, and two crew members having an unfortunate run-in with some unsavory creatures.

Jon Spaihts' and Damon Lindelof's screenplay has some fascinating philosophical and religious ideas infused into the action-packed suspense of the crew’s exploration.  The questions asked throughout the film, particularly why we are here, who created us and what happens after we die, are among the most important.  Those questions are the reason for this voyage in the first place.  With Noomi Rapace’s character being pious and Logan Marshall-Green’s character being a skeptic, the two share a thought-provoking conversation about the possibilities of the existence of gods and their motivations for creating humans.  While there are some questions that are answered, there are more that are not.  Those questions will more than likely be addressed again in the possible sequel, and the extra ending will have long-time fans, as well as newbies to the series, cheering and hoping for a continuation of the story.  You'll have to find out for yourself what's included in that ending.  The film doesn't require the viewer to have an extensive knowledge of the Alien mythology to follow Prometheus, but it does help to at least know the general idea of it.  

After many years of non-science fiction projects, Ridley Scott returns without having any of his flair for the genre missing.  Much like Alien, he has his latest film not be just about the famous creature, but about deeper issues as well.  He continues to offer visions of a bleak and uncertain future that is filled with advancements in both science and technology that could lead to greatness, or to our demise.  He can tell a story of a grand and hazardous adventure in his deep-space canvas and fill it with interesting ideas.  Prometheus begins a thrilling and scary new chapter for the Alien universe, with a lot more that has yet to be revealed to us.  Until then, like the characters speculate where they came from, we will speculate where they are going next.

Final grade: A-

Through Time and Space

When thinking about secret agents, we tend to connect them with the likes of the FBI or CIA, combating terrorism and defending our country.  When we think of them in the context of sci-fi and aliens, however, the Earthly defenders known as the Men in Black come to mind.  Unlike the fellows in Washington, this undercover group of alien-headhunters protect us from intergalactic threats, and clean up whatever gooey mess they might leave.  It may not be the most glamorous job, but their suits make them look good doing it.

In Men in Black 3, the latest in director Barry Sonnenfeld's sci-fi comedy franchise, a human-alien mixer, if you will, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones pick up their neuralyzers and put on their shades to fight more otherworldly threats.  With a script that revives the fun of the first entry that was unreasonably missing in the second, this installment adds a new layer to the relationship between Smith's and Jones' characters, while retaining the eccentric, outer-space fun that is the energy source for the story and characters.

Agent J (Smith) and Agent K (Jones) have been working together for several years, hunting down harmful aliens while also working alongside the more benevolent ones.  Although J wants to know more about K afters years of being his partner, he just responds to J by telling him that there are secrets of the universe that J doesn't know about.  Meanwhile, an alien known as Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement), who has a connection to K's past, escapes his prison on the moon, after having been placed there by K decades ago.  Boris soon uses a time manipulator to create an alternate universe where he killed K years ago, never ended up in prison and instigates an invasion on Earth by his people in the present day.  It is then J's task to journey back in time to 1969 so he can find K and prevent Boris from setting his plans in motion.

Will Smith brings back his wildcard temperament that has boosted his character's performance throughout this trilogy.  Whether he's fighting alien scum, adjusting to the attitudes of 1969 (particularly the racial issues) or casually annoying K, he looks like he's having great fun doing it, while also being his traditionally goofy self.  Ever since he first became a Man in Black, J's character has shown some maturity, especially by the film's end, as he finds out an important detail from his childhood that better defines his relationship with Agent K.  With this, there is an unexpected, but certainly welcomed, dose of drama in J's story-line that unveils a hidden part to his character.

Tommy Lee Jones only appears in a few scenes, and he drops hints that he's hiding some information that's of importance to J.  That's enough for us to transition to K's younger self (Josh Brolin), and learn more about his character and what it is he's withholding.  Brolin's impression of Jones is fantastically uncanny, and has the spirit of K's character throughout the film, despite Jones' extended absence.  Brolin masters the facial expressions and method of speech that brings us to a greater sense of traveling back in time with J and meeting a younger K and Tommy Lee Jones.

Jemaine Clement is splendidly evil as the film's sunglasses-wearing alien threat.  Even in his first scene, you can tell you're going to enjoy his character, even though you're rooting against him.  He is as fearsome as he is fun to watch with his deep, menacing voice and the way he displays his sharp teeth.  Michael Stuhlbarg plays the fascinating character, Griffin, an alien who has the burdening ability to predict events in multiple futures.  He is torn between both positive and negative occurrences, as he must experience pleasure and displeasure of having this clairvoyant power.  The use of his special strength offers the movie an ample amount of foreshadowing as we wait for the outcomes of the actions from J and K.  Bill Hader has a surprising scene as the 1960s icon and delightfully oddball artist, Andy Warhol, who turns out to be a Man in Black as well.

Etan Cohen's screenplay, which is based on Lowell Cunningham's The Men in Black comic books, makes a clever use of the older-cop-younger-cop archetype in the time-travel aspect of the film.  Part of what makes these films enjoyable is the contrasting personalities of J's hip and outgoing attitude and K's reserved and curmudgeonly attitude.  J, being young and cocky, thinks he knows it all; whereas K believes that there is still much for him to learn.  But once J goes back in time, however, the two agents' roles are reversed, with J technically being the older and more seasoned agent, and the younger K having just started out.  As the two team-up together, J's questions, as well as those of the audience, are answered as we learn why K is the way he is.

Several of the film's jokes hit their marks, such as those of Agent J experiencing what it's like to be an African-American in the 1960s.  Other jokes, however, fall flat.  In the scene where the two agents meet Andy Warhol, he begins to get on J's nerves, to which he tells the artist: "You know, I'd have no problem pimp-slapping the shiznit out of Andy Warhol."  It's an embarrassing joke that would have belonged better in either of the previous two films, since Smith's gangster-talk routine as run its course by now.  The visual effects are hit-and-miss, with a monocycle chase being a standout.  But others, however, look cartoonish.  As always, one of Hollywood's best makeup artists, Rick Baker, serves some wonderful alien appearances, especially those of Boris the Animal.

Barry Sonnenfeld repairs most of the damages done by the second film to the Men in Black series by placing some focus on the story's characters in the middle of this alien round-up.  Given how Men in Black 3 ends, the filmmakers should leave it how it is, since the relationship between J and K concludes on a satisfying note.  Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones have done what they can with these roles and have brought us some fun performances, but now, it's time to hang up the suits.  Don't worry, the universe will be just fine.

Final grade: B