Movie Review Serenity

Serenity (2019) 

Directed by Steven Knight 

Written by Steven Knight

Starring Matthew McConaughey, Jason Clarke, Anne Hathaway, Diane Lane, Djimon Hounsou 

Release Date January 25th, 2019

Published January 19th, 2019 

Serenity is a highly ambitious and deeply misbegotten attempt to make a modern film noir. Writer-Director Steven Knight has something going for him in Serenity but continues to undermine himself and his movie with bizarre choices that lead to an unsatisfying and almost laughable, laugh out loud conclusion. The film strands an incredible cast in what approximates a Shyamalan level of lunatic aspiration. 

Matthew McConaughey stars in Serenity as, no I am not making this up, Baker Dill. Baker is a fishing boat captain catering to tourists on a mysterious tropical island called Plymouth. Baker has a passion for fishing but specifically a passion for one specific fish, a giant Tuna that he has come to call Justice, and yes it is a heavily tortured metaphor. No points for guessing that as the film hammers the point into your brain pan. 

Baker is seemingly driven only by this giant tuna but lately other things have begun to permeate his consciousness. Specifically, Baker has recently been plagued by memories and visions of a son he left behind when he went to war in Iraq. Upon his return, his then girlfriend and the mother of his child, Karen (Anne Hathaway), has moved on and married another man and cut Baker out of her and her son’s life. 

Baker’s visions of his son are truly bizarre as he appears to be able to hear his son’s voice and vaguely communicate with him with some sort of water based ESP. In one of the film’s epically bizarre scenes, a naked Baker swims in the ocean with his also naked teenage son. Why? There is no good reason, it’s just something that director Steven Knight thought might communicate the strange, water based ESP thing I mentioned before. The nudity is an off-putting choice to say the least. 

Out of the water, Baker is approached by his ex-wife with a proposition. Karen wants Baker to take her husband Frank (Jason Clarke) out fishing and toss him to the fishes. In exchange, Karen is offering $10 million dollars and perhaps the chance to see his son again. Baker immediately rejects the idea despite Karen telling him that Frank has been abusive toward her and toward their son. After meeting the epically awful Frank, Baker still resists but will his psychic connection to his son change his mind. 

No, that last line is not me being snarky… well, not entirely snarky. The plot does legitimately turn on whether Baker’s fuzzy, incomplete, ESP connection to his son will cause him to accept the offer to murder Frank and it is as goofy as that sounds. There is a great deal more however to the connection between father and son including a looney final act twist that left me utterly gobsmacked. The ending of Serenity is surprising but not a good surprise, more of a WTF surprise. 

In an effort to take the classic noir thriller to a place that might appeal to the hip, modern, technically advanced older teen and twenty-something crowd, director Steven Knight has conceived a twist that is remarkably hokey and tone deaf. It’s the kind of twist that middle aged folks like myself laugh at and younger types will straight up ignore in the way you ignore grandpa’s less than helpful comments on Facebook posts. 

It’s a twist that works remarkably well at alienating audiences of all ages, uniting generations in eye-rolls of epic proportions and derisive laughter that will last till we reach the parking lot of the local theater. Honestly, I do admire the sheer madness of the twist attempted in Serenity but I can’t help but mock the result. The execution is so laughable and clumsy that jaw dropping exasperation can only evolve into giggles of sheer schadenfreude. 

I take no genuine pleasure in laughing at rather than with Serenity. These are a group of incredibly talented actors and a director I really do respect. Steven Knight directed Locke, an exceptional and experimental thriller that got the best out of the great Tom Hardy and demonstrated the talent for talking out loud to himself that would make Venom so sneakily entertaining. Knight knows how to make a movie. Serenity is merely an example of a hill too hard to climb to a destination that wasn’t worth climbing to. 

Movie Review: Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace (2007) 

Directed by Michael Apted 

Written by Steven Knight 

Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Romola Garai, Ioan Gruffaud, Albert Finney 

Release Date February 23rd, 2007 

Published February 23rd, 2007 

How do I recommend a movie like Amazing Grace? In the following paragraphs you will read that I don't find the film all that entertaining. Rather, I describe it as solid, professional, modest, educational, and like something produced by the History Channel. Not exactly the kind of movie that you run to the video store to grab for a Friday night date.

Amazing Grace is more appropriate for a classroom setting. It's studious and factual with the good intention of telling a valuable true story. As directed by the veteran Michael Apted, Amazing Grace is well made and admirably performed. I hope that is enough to get someone to see it, but I understand if you may prefer something else.

William Wilburforce (Ioan Gruffaud) was an easy touch for the issue his friend Pitt (Benedict Cumberbatch) brought to him. The cause? The end of the slave trade in England. Wilburforce had before then been merely a junior member of parliament who made his name with grand oratories that were mostly ignored by senior members.

When Wilburforce took up the cause, after meeting a former slave named Equiano (Youssour N'Dour) and a passionate preacher named Thomas Clarkson (Rufus Sewell), he was facing a losing battle. Much of the economy of the country was tied up in the slave trade and slave labor. It was not long before he was throwing himself into some of the most famous speeches in the country's history.

In an 11 year battle Wilburforce lost more fights than he won but he won when it counted.Amazing Grace is the movie the History Channel might make if they made films. Dry, concise, factual. All good traits, if not the most exciting or entertaining traits. Fans of the History Channel, like my father who runs it on a 24 hour loop when he's not watching golf, will find Amazing Grace to be just to their liking. School administrators are another audience likely to be satisfied with Amazing Grace and it's PG rated factuality.

As William Wilburforce Fantastic Four's Ioan Gruffaud gets to do some of the acting that being a CGI rubber band never allowed. It's not the first time that Gruffaud has shown he has some chops, his debut in the A & E mini-series Horatio Hornblower showed his promise as a capital A Actor. His performance in Amazing Grace is more mature than Hornblower, but also far less exciting. Steady, loyal, passionate, his Wilburforce is perfectly calibrated to the rather dry material he is given to interpret.

The rest of the cast is free to be a little more quirky and interesting. Though Romala Garai is underused as William's wife, she does brighten things up a bit by bringing a pretty face to the mostly male proceedings. The one truly entertaining performance comes from the crafty veteran Michael Gambon. Playing a senior member of parliament who surprises Wilburforce with his support, it is Gambon's character who seems to be pulling many of the important strings. That may or may not be true but the mischievous grin on Gambon's face throughout is fun to speculate on.

For fans of a very old school, masterpiece theater approach to filmmaking, Amazing Grace will have great appeal. Most mainstream moviegoers need not apply. There is nothing thrilling or even moderately rousing about this steady, solid and factual historic exercise. I am recommending Amazing Grace because I have no real reason not to. I was engaged by it, occasionally moved, if not entertained in any modern sense of the word. I was educated by it and that is valuable.

Valuable, steady, factual. These aren't exactly adjectives that sell you a movie for a friday night. Nevertheless, Amazing Grace is too well made and well intentioned to be a bad movie. It's not a bad movie, it's just not an entertaining movie.

Movie Review: Woman Walks Ahead

Woman Walks Ahead (2018)

Directed by Susanna White 

Written by Steven Knight 

Starring Jessica Chastain, Michael Greyeyes, Sam Rockwell

Release Date June 29th, 2018 

Published October 5th, 2018

Jessica Chastain is, arguably, the best actress working in Hollywood today. She’s a magnetic force, she draws you toward her character effortlessly. She’s tough yet wildly charismatic and even in a lesser movie like Woman Walks Ahead, she maintains a level of excellence that exceeds the limitations of a weak script or soft direction. In Woman Walks Ahead Chastain manages to overcome historical inaccuracy to craft the essence of a true story infused with a faux romance.

In Woman Walks Ahead Jessica Chastain portrays Caroline Weldon, a painter from New York City whose husband has passed away. With him gone, she’s free to pursue her passion which is portrait painting with a specialty in portraiture. Caroline has had Senators and Governors sit for her portraits but her next famous painting is unquestionably her most ambitious. Caroline wishes to travel west to paint a portrait of the Native American Chief Sitting Bull (Michael Greyeyes).

Caroline is met with resistance to her plan almost immediately. On the train to the Dakota territories she’s met by an army Colonel (Sam Rockwell) who assumes she’s a liberal agitator out to stir up an already tense political dispute over a new Native American treaty. The Colonel warns Catherine to stay on the train and go back to New York and when she doesn’t he makes sure she is left at the station.

Not about to give up, Carole walked the several mile distance from the train to Standing Rock where the Calvary and the Indians live next door to one another in a tense state of détente. In town Caroline is once again told to go home, this time by the Mayor (Ciarin Hinds) who orders her locked in a cabin to be forcibly taken to the train station the following day. This doesn’t happen however as Caroline is taken to meet Sitting Bull the following day and unusual friendship begins.

Woman Walks Ahead is loosely based on a true story. Caroline Weldon was a painter but also a Native American ally and activist, something left out of the movie. Weldon went to Standing Rock as much to protest the Dawes Act as to paint Sitting Bull’s portrait. She did befriend Sitting Bull but when Sitting Bull committed to fighting against the Dawes Act with violent resistance, he and Weldon disagreed vehemently and the division drove the two apart before Sitting Bull’s murder.

The movie builds a romance between Chastain’s Catherine and Michael Greyeyes’ Sitting Bull that is pure invention and arguably, not a needed invention. The romance would be purely filler if Chastain and Greyeyes didn’t have explosive chemistry. There is a smolder between these two actors that turns a perfunctory, tacked-on romantic plot and it makes it feel vital and alive. There may not be any sex in Woman Walks Ahead but there are enough longing stares to fill a lifetime.

Woman Walks Ahead was directed by television veteran Susanna White. White takes quickly to feature filmmaking with good instinct for pace and tone and a few risky scenes of violence, one of which really turned my stomach with it’s severity and yet the film still held me in place because of my investment in these characters and this sort of true story. It’s the truth dressed up with a little melodrama to make it go down easy and that’s likely where White’s TV training came in handy.

Woman Walks Ahead works because Jessica Chastain is a great movie star and an even better actress. She’s charismatic and fierce throughout capturing just the kind of tenacity it must have taken for a single, 44 year old New Yorker to board a train for Standing Rock amidst one of the most tense moments in the history of our relationship with American Indians. It took guts to do what Caroline Weldon did and Jessica Chastain exemplifies gutty in Woman Walks Ahead.

One last thing I want to mention, the score of Woman Walks Ahead is superb. George Fenton was responsible for the score and the mournful, melancholy plucking of a guitar has rarely been so moving. It's a sublime listening experience on top of being perfectly in line with the tone of the film which isn't entirely melancholy but has a certain foresight of sadness to come that lingers in the air and the score perpetuates that air brilliantly. 

Movie Review Seventh Son

Seventh Son (2015) 

Directed by Sergei Bodrov

Written by Charles Leavitt, Steven Knight

Starring Jeff Bridge, Julianne Moore, Ben Barnes, Alicia Vikander, Kit Harrington, Olivia Williams, Djimon Hounsou 

Release Date February 6th, 2015 

Published February 5th, 2015

There is a sad and desperate affliction plaguing middle aged Hollywood stars. I’ve come to call it “Nicolas-Cage-Itis.” NCI, as we will henceforth refer to it, strikes when an actor reaches of a level of age and stardom where they are no longer seen as viable leading men but can’t pull themselves from in front of the camera.

The dissonance between their faded place in the pop ephemera and their own perception of their pop mortality clash and a level of madness emerges that leads to making movies of questionable taste and quality. John Cusack, for one, has succumbed mightily to NCI and will in 2015 star in a film project so bereft it likely will never be seen outside of China.

Other actors look on the verge of an NCI flare up, Johnny Depp is perilously close, Keanu Reeves seems to have pulled back from the brink but still could go either way and Tom Cruise is just one batshit crazy sci-fi movie from a full blown case. Sadly, however, the most recent fully diagnosed case of NCI is Academy Award winner and all around good dude Jeff Bridges.

With his “RIPD,” “The Giver,” and “Seventh Son” triumvirate it’s clear Bridges is in the throes of a full on Nicolas-Cage-Itis breakdown. He’s already begun the ‘bizarre accents are why I make movies’ phase of the illness. Soon, he will be experimenting with his hairline and having massive tax problems.

“Seventh Son” was the final piece of the NCI diagnosis. This misbegotten YA adventure movie stars Bridges as a mystical witch hunter named Master Gregory and while you might be tempted to believe Bridges wanted to play a mystical witch hunter named Master Gregory on a lark, it’s clear he chose the role because he was allowed to speak in a manner of his choosing, something akin to Morgan Freeman without teeth.

Yes, the accent is really the only reason Bridges wanted to play Master Gregory. Any director indulgent enough to allow his star to mush mouth his way through an ostensibly teen-friendly blockbuster adventure clearly isn’t asking much of his star. No, Bridges and his star power quite clearly dominate every aspect of “Seventh Son” which means nothing too challenging and only the vaguest sense that anyone gives the slightest damn about the material.

Joining Bridges with her own mild case of NCI is Academy Award nominee Julianne Moore. Bridges’ Lady Friend from “The Big Lebowski” plays a witch that Gregory once loved, then hunted and now hunts again after she escapes from the prison he made her years before. The love story aspect is left thankfully to the willing imagination as the movie is given over to high camp vamping and the chewing of scenery.

It’s difficult to decide what is more dispiriting about “Seventh Son:” Bridges and Moore’s dull, camp excess or the abysmal love story tacked on to their teenage sidekicks. Ben Barnes Barnes and Alicia Vikander play star-crossed lovers, witch-hunter apprentice and witch, respectively, with about as much romantic chemistry as mismatched shelving units. If you need a sense of just how invested the film is in Barnes’ apprentice character, his name is Tom Ward. Tom Ward. “Seventh Son” is set in a world of Witches, Dragons and shape shifting Bears and Leopards and they are battled by a guy named Tom. At least Gregory gets call himself ‘Master.’

“Seventh Son” is an incredibly depressing piece of work. It’s a YA adaptation, it’s dreary and lumbering with about as much wonder and excitement as a trip to the DMV. But, of course, the dreariest of the dreary is watching Jeff Bridges entertain himself. Bridges is playing an elaborate prank that’s only funny for him. He’s fully aware of how ridiculous he looks and sounds but he’s also wildly entertained by it. We, on the other hand, are just hurt that our hero won’t let us in on the joke.

Mr. Bridges’s case of NCI is in that hermetic stage where a selfish negation of all outside opinion leads to humiliating career decisions that the star doesn’t fully realize they’re making. NCI blinds the star from seeing how silly they look and consequently divorces them from reality enough that they take a strange pride in their own oddity.

Can Mr. Bridges recover from this devilish disease? It’s hard to say. The progenitor of NCI, Nicolas Cage Esquire, does, on occasion, allow his talent to emerge from behind his lunacy but seemingly only by accident. Maybe it will be by accident that we will once again see Mr. Bridges. For now, sadly, his NCI has fully overtaken his good sense and “Seventh Son” is the signifier of his full blown madness.