Tag Archives: SciFi films

To Serve Man

Arrival

by Hope Madden

Amy Adams is as reliable an actor as they come. Thoughtful and expressive, she shares a tremendous range of emotions without uttering a sound.

With his latest, Arrival, director Denis Villeneuve puts her skills to use to quietly display everything from wonder to terror to hope to gratitude as her character, Dr. Louise Banks, struggles to communicate with visitors.

Twelve vessels have touched down in random spots across the globe: Sierra Leone, Russia, China, United States. Each nation has taken its own tack toward determining the purpose of the aliens. An expert in communication and linguistics, Banks has been brought to Montana to decipher that purpose.

Villeneuve, working from Eric Heisserer’s adaptation of Ted Chiang’s short “Story of Your Life,” whispers reminders of a dozen other alien invasion films without ever bending to predictability. His is a sense of cautious wonder.

Those familiar with the director’s work – particularly his more mainstream films Prisoners and Sicario – may be preparing for the unendurably tense. No need.

Yes, there are armed skirmishes, doomsday predictions and bad decisions, but Villeneuve’s focus and ours is always with Banks, whose struggle to make sense of the situation mirrors our own.

Adams owns a performance that does not immediately dazzle. Banks is a solitary, somewhat morose figure. Her predicament reflects humanity’s – she isn’t using her power to communicate for its true use, connecting.

Villeneuve and Adams toy with your expectations – Adams, because of your preconceived notions concerning her solitude, and Villeneuve through a sly playfulness with time and structure.

This sleight of hand allows the filmmaker to ask questions that are simultaneously grand and intimate. Arrival is a quiet film – not mind-blowing or terrifying or one to elicit a self-satisfied, “Fuck yeah!”

People looking for explosions and jingoism on a global scale need not attend. In its place is a quiet contemplation on speaking, listening and working together. While that may not sound like much excitement, it’s about as relevant a message today as anything I can think of.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

SciFi of Significance

by Hope Madden

The wondrous galactic epic Gravity delivers an unmatched cinematic achievement. Co-writer/director Alfonso Cuarón sets you adrift in space, and for 90 minutes he leaves you breathless at the glory of the universe, and wrung out at the drama of attempted survival.

His work will make you remember why you go to movies – to the dark auditorium with the big, big screen. It will make you remember a time when a trip to the cinema utterly dwarfed the experience of movie night at home.

To create this magnificent beast, Cuarón created tools and technology that simply did not exist prior to this film. He created what he needed to authentically craft the sense of zero gravity, utter silence, cosmic lighting – all in 3D, no less.

When it comes to the vehicle for all this gadgetry, Cuarón, along with co-writer and son Jonás, seems to understand that simplicity is his friend. He refuses to complicate the tale, and the paired down narrative allows the primal terror and exhilaration of the space adventure to take hold.

Cuarón’s camera takes us to the outer reaches, and then crawls inside the space suit, allowing us to hurl unmoored through space along with Sandra Bullock’s novice astronaut. She is a medical researcher on her first space voyage, and she is in over her head, unprepared for all that she will experience. Just like us.

A playful George Clooney tags along for camaraderie, helping Cuarón create a joyous calm before the crisis. They’re astronauts. Look how cool that is! No wonder they risk almost unimaginable peril to do it.

Though the narrative makes a misstep here and there with emotional trickery and melodrama, what errors Cuarón makes with words he more than compensates for with the overwhelming visual experience.

The action will wring you out as you curse the clumsy suits, rail against the unpredictability of gravity, strain with heroes desperate to rush in a silent calm that will not allow it. Gravity doesn’t just deliver a magnificent view of space; it also offers perhaps the most breathlessly exciting action adventure of the year.

Visually glorious does not begin to describe Cuarón’s film. More than that, Gravity is realistic – jaw droppingly so. And this is why people began making movies in the first place – to transport you someplace magical, someplace otherworldly. Few if any have succeeded in this quest quite as Cuarón has with Gravity.

 

Verdict-4-5-Stars