The Tomorrow War

Tomorrow isn’t looking quite so bright.

(2021) Science Fiction (Paramount) Chris Pratt, Yvonne Strahovsky, J.K. Simmons, Betty Gilpin, Sam Richardson, Jasmine Matthews, Edwin Hodge, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Keith Powers, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Mike Mitchell, Jared Shaw, Alexis Louder, Rose Bianco, Seychelle Gabriel, Alan Trong, Chibuikem Uche, Dave Maldonado, Kasandra Banfield. Directed by Chris McKay

 

Among the pandemic’s casualties was this film, meant to be one of Paramount’s tentpoles in the never-to-be-forgotten (no matter how hard we try) summer of 2020 but relegated to the indignity of direct-to-streaming the following year.

High school biology teacher Dan Forester (Pratt), a former Green Beret who has felt unfulfilled since returning home from the Iraq War, is trying to find a research job without success. His wife Emmy (Gilpin) and daughter Muri (Armstrong) believe in him, but he still feels like he’s missing something. Perhaps it’s his estranged dad (Simmons), a no-nonsense macho sort who has become an anti-government hermit living off the grid.

But his life – and everyone else’s – is turned upside down with the appearance of time travelers appearing at a soccer game with disturbing news; earth has been invaded by aliens and 20 years in the future, mankind is on the verge of becoming extinct. The future needs soldiers and they’ve come to the past to recruit them.

The survival rate is appalling, but Dan knows he has to go and despite the objections of his wife and tears of his daughter, he knows that this is the war he was meant to fight. On the jaunt back to the future he befriends fellow scientist Charlie (Richardson) and soldier Dorian (Hodge), the latter of whom is entering his third seven-day tour. Oh, that’s right, I forgot to tell you – they can only spend seven days in the future before being bounced back to their own time.

He also meets a hard-boiled colonel (Strahovsky) who has a nagging familiarity to her (and only the most dullest of intellects won’t be able to figure out why). He faces the aliens – all tentacles and teeth, shooting bony white projectiles from their tentacles, which nets them the name “White Spikes.” But even the infusion of cannon fodder from the past isn’t making much of a difference as the aliens are too many, breed too quickly and are too blamed hard to kill. Mankind may well be doomed – unless someone can come up with a solution to nip the problem before it rears its ugly multi-tentacled head.

This sci-fi action/war movie has elements of alien invasion movies like Skyline and sci-fi war tales like Starship Troopers and falls about in the middle of those two films in terms of quality. Pratt is a bright spot, one of Hollywood’s most consistently successful stars since emerging in the MCU as Star-Lord nearly a decade ago. This doesn’t feel like another franchise film for him; while he excels in the action sequences, he sometimes falters when the scenes are more dramatic in nature. He has always tended to do better with a bit of a smirk than with a bit of pathos.

Strahovsky is a capable actress who should have become a big star after Chuck ended, but hasn’t gotten the kinds of roles that would elevate her there. Simmons shows off his buff bod, astonishing for a 66-year-old man, but is given little else to do. Richardson and Hodge supply good support – Richardson as comic relief, Hodge as resident badass support – but it’s clear that the centerpiece are the CGI alien and action set pieces.

What bothers me most about the movie is the plot inconsistencies. People from the past are sent forward in time to essentially serve as cannon fodder; doesn’t that affect the future if they die in the war, leaving them unable to return to the past and live out the lives they were meant to? It also seems somewhat odd that we are able to invent time travel and yet we have made no significant improvement in armament. Most wars tend to lead to breakthroughs in military technology but nothing here seems to be terribly advanced.

Still, there’s plenty of action, plenty of carnage, plenty of nasty aliens and plenty of Chris Pratt. Chances are this would have done only middling business in the theaters had their not been a pandemic, and likely would have lost money but the sale of the movie from Paramount to Amazon meant it will at least break even for the studio, although whether that translates to profit for Amazon is anyone’s guess.

=REASONS TO SEE: Pratt has become one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars.
REASONS TO AVOID: Some oddball plot inconsistences.
FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of sci-fi violence and carnage, as well as some profanity including sexually suggestive dialogue.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Chris Pratt is married to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s daughter.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon
CRITICAL MASS:& As of 11/28/2021: Rotten Tomatoes: 52% positive reviews; Metacritic: 45/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Edge of Tomorrow
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Black Friday

Bliss (2021)

Skating through life.

(2021) Science Fiction (Amazon)  Owen Wilson, Salma Hayek, Nesta Cooper, Jorge Landeborg Jr., Ronny Chieng, Steve Zissis, Josh Leonard, Madeline Zima, Bill Nye, Slavoj Zizek, DeRon Horton, Eugene Young, Dayne Catalano, Adam William Zastrow, Lora Lee, Darin Cooper, Roberto Montesinos, Kosah Rukavina, Tanya Alexander, Debbie Fan. Directed by Mike Cahill

In a speech in 1977, science fiction author Philip K. Dick posited the idea that the world we live in is not reality but a computer simulation, predating The Matrix by more than a decade. But what is reality, exactly? If our senses can be manipulated, who’s to say that what reality is may not necessarily be what we perceive it to be?

The reality that Greg Whittle (Wilson) lives in isn’t too appealing. He works in a phone bank whose drones endlessly apologize to callers for whatever technical difficulties they may be experiencing without offering any sort of solution to fix it. Greg is a professional apologist and he’s not even that good at it; much of his time is spent daydreaming, doodling a beautiful palatial mansion that he could never possibly afford to live in unless he had a rich trillionaire uncle that he didn’t know about.

His doodling hasn’t gone unnoticed and he is called into his boss’ office where his employment is terminated. However, when Greg accidentally kills his boss, he panics, hiding the body and running across the street to a bar for a cocktail to calm his nerves. There he meets Isabel (Hayek), an apparently  homeless woman with a fantastic story; the reality that Greg is in is a computer construct and most of the people, including Greg’s boss, aren’t real. Because Isabel is real, she can manipulate the computer program by ingesting yellow crystals through the nose, and to prove it to him, manipulates reality to make it appear as if what happened to Greg’s boss was a suicide.

At last, Isabel takes Greg into the real world, accessed by means of ingesting the much rarer blue crystals – so rare that they are unable to get the full dosage needed for both of them to remain in the real world. There, Greg finds a Utopia where poverty has been eradicated, labor is done mainly by mechanical means and most people live a life of leisure devoted to artistic and scientific pursuits. The home that Greg has been doodling turns out to be the place where he lives. But because they were unable to get the full dose of blue crystals, Isabel and Greg need to return into the computer-generated world to acquire a full dosage – plus there’s the matter of Greg’s daughter Emily (Cooper) who isn’t real, but whom Greg is devoted to nonetheless. In the end, Isabel and Greg are only able to gather enough blue crystals to send one of them back to Utopia. Which one will stay?

Bliss is meant to be a 103 minute mindfuck, meant to make you try to figure out which reality was real and which was the simulation – or maybe both of them are simulations. Or maybe both of them are real. You can get a real headache trying to keep it straight.

It’s a great premise, but unfortunately the execution is weak. For one thing, there seems to have been some fudging on the science and the economics; for example, one of the reasons poverty has been eliminated was that asteroid mining brought an influx of new wealth into the global economy, but if you study economic history (as in 17^th century Spain, for example) you will realize that kind of influx of wealth tends to bring ruinous inflation that actually wrecks the economy. And the likelihood that those who made trillions of dollars from the ining enterprise would then donate an annual salary of half a million dollars a year to every living adult is so unlikely to occur as to be virtually impossible.

Also, while Wilson and Hayek are both talented individually, they don’t mesh well together here. Wilson’s laid-back persona almost necessitates some kind of balancing counter-performance and so Hayek seems compelled to get almost shrill in order to bring some energy to the proceedings. And considering that they are supposed to be soulmates, you never feel any sort of attraction between the two of them. I give points for Wilson doing the type of role he doesn’t take on very often, but unfortunately it isn’t enough here.

The ending, which I won’t reveal here, also feels largely unearned and unsatisfying. This is a movie with plenty of good ideas, but they don’t seem to have been thought out very well. Cahill has a tendency to overexplain (we spend an inordinate amount of time hearing about the various efficacies of the crystals and why they need to be snorted and not eaten) and at times it gets in the way of the story. Sometimes, it’s better to just say “this is the way things are in this world” and let the audience fill in the blanks.

REASONS TO SEE: Wilson tackles a role outside his comfort zone.
REASONS TO AVOID: The science doesn’t appear to have been very well thought-out.
FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of profanity, a fair amount of violence and some scenes of sexuality.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Cahill studied economics at Georgetown; while a student there he struck up a friendship with future actress Brit Marling.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon
CRITICAL MASS: As of 2/25/21: Rotten Tomatoes: 28% positive reviews; Metacritic: 38/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Matrix
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: Cowboys

Clarity

Healthcare isn’t what it used to be.

(2014) Drama (Vision) Nadine Velazquez, Dina Meyer, Maurice Compte, Tony Denison, Dana Melanie, Lourdes Narro, Geovanni Gopradi, Anton Rivas, Rusty Meyers, Jason Sarcinelli, Cazi Greene, Thompson Jr., Vinda Montalvo, Veronica Lopez, Eduard Osipov, Christina Roman, Joey Huebner, Morgen Weaver, Luis Delgado, Danny Pacheco, Andrew Pacheco, Sharon Resnikoff. Directed by Peyv Raz

 

A mother’s love is pretty much about as certain as death and taxes. There aren’t many moms who wouldn’t go through hell for the sake of their child and if that child’s life hung in the balance, well there isn’t anything they wouldn’t do to save them

Sharon (Meyer) is throwing a dinner party to welcome her adopted daughter Maggie (Melanie) home from medical school. However when she arrives home she suddenly collapses at the dinner table and is rushed to the hospital. As it turns out, Maggie has a rare disease that is causing her kidney to fail and she needs a new one pronto. As she is adopted, nobody in Las Vegas – where Sharon lives – can help. They’ll have to find her birth mother who Sharon only knows lives somewhere in Mexico.

But Maggie being adopted is a bit of a misnomer. She was in fact stolen from her birth mother Carmen (Velazquez – Narro as the younger version in flashbacks) and sold to the rich American. Sharon wasn’t aware of this although Malcolm (Denison), her late husband’s muscle man, knew the score. So he heads off south of the Border to bring Carmen back. He doesn’t mention that her long lost daughter needs a kidney. Carmen’s husband Omar (Compte) is somewhat suspicious at the sudden reunion and insists on coming along.

Carmen has the same disease as her daughter does and the transplant may very well kill her – which makes one wonder if poor Maggie is getting a kidney that will last her for very long. Sharon is used to getting what she wants but as the power shifts from the wealthy Sharon to Carmen who wants justice for having her child stolen from her, Maggie’s life will hang in the balance.

I’ll give credit where credit is due; this is a really good concept for a film and it brings up some solid socioeconomic points not to mention some pretty strong emotional ones. Unfortunately, the opportunity provided by a good concept is squandered in execution, mainly because the movie ends up coming off like a particularly hysterical telenovela.

Some of the plot points strain credibility, particularly near the end when Carmen threatens Sharon, and by extension, her own daughter. It comes out of left field and especially when Carmen went through such heartache and at last is reunited with her daughter I don’t think that she would do anything to endanger her daughter’s life – but beyond that there’s also the dialogue which does sound like soap opera 101. Not that I have anything against soap operas but the movie takes all the worst elements of that particular art form which may well thrill fans of that genre but if, like me, you’re not quite so enamored this might not be good news at all

Meyer, who was one of my favorite actresses of the 90s (I’ll never forget her work on Starship Troopers and Eyes Wide Shut) puts as much dignity as she can muster into the role. Velazquez who has done some stellar work on her TV shows Major Crimes and Six does what she can with a character who is often contradictory which I suppose makes her fairly realistic. Playing the innocent martyr is Melanie who at least manages to look beautiful and ill at the same time.

Much of the rest of the cast injects some hysterics in their histrionics. I don’t blame them to be honest; with a movie like this chewing scenery is really the only option for an actor and a lot of that goes on here. I do think this is a bit of a wasted opportunity; this could have further explored the class divide between the wealthy trophy wife of a Las Vegas businessman (I don’t think it was really necessary to make him so shady) and the impoverished hard-working Mexican girl; given the current climate of Mexican-American relations, a lot of hay could have been made of that as well although to be fair this was filmed well before Trump was elected. If the over-dramatics had been cut down in the plot, this could have been a really nice little film. Hopefully Raz’s next one will be better.

REASONS TO GO: The concept is good and Meyer handles her part like a pro.
REASONS TO STAY: The dialogue is cringe-inducing. Some of the writing is a bit on the overwrought side.
FAMILY VALUES: The movie has a bit of violence as well as discussion of a character’s rape.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is the feature directing debut for Peyv Raz.
BEYOND THE THEATER: Amazon, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Vimeo, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 10/13/17: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet. Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Finding Forrester
FINAL RATING: 4/10
NEXT: Monogamish

The Midnight Matinee

The filmmakers of Midnight Matinee are appealing to a potential audience one viewer at a time.

(2017) Horror Anthology (IP Productions) Maggie Tehan, Justin Doesch, Juan-Pablo Veizaga, Shaun Woodland, Ian Flanders, Melissa Merry, Aggie Binkley, Maggie Binkley, Becky Edwards, Jimmy Edwards, Sophie Edwards, Jennifer McCormick, Santiago Veizaga. Directed by Justin Doesch

 

I’m a bit of a sucker for horror anthologies. I always go into them hoping I’ll get that rare and magical experience – when all the stories within the anthology are terrific. It hasn’t happened yet but I still keep hoping.

Justin Doesch, the man behind the camera for this anthology, is a name you should remember. He’s definitely got a ton of potential and a boatload of vision. He’s delivered five pretty solid stories in an amazing 42 minutes – an average of about eight minutes per segment. I have nothing against short, taut storytelling but my main complaint here is that some of the segments could have used some fleshing out; there was an unfinished feeling to some of them as if key scenes hadn’t made it into the final product.

The opening segment, “Open Sea,” is one of those. It is a bit of a cross between The Blair Witch Project and Open Water. Brian (Doesch) is taking his girlfriend Lauren (Tehan) out on his boat on the ocean for some scuba diving but with a specific purpose; he means to propose to her. Unfortunately, man proposes and sometimes, the ocean disposes. The Blair Witch aspect is that Brian intends to document the big day but he ends up documenting something else. It actually is a pretty decent segment but it felt rushed in terms of pacing and the payoff, one of the better effects shots of the film, could have used a bit more build-up.

“Let Go” is the weakest of the five. It’s modern dating with a twist. Let’s just say that if you think you’ve got problem with the dating scene, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Unfortunately, I found my attention wandering during this one although it does have a pretty decent twist. “Premonition” also utilizes found footage but in a totally unique and different way. A little girl who is prescient tries to warn someone against a life or death situation…but being psychic doesn’t mean you get to save people. Timing, as they say, is everything.

The next sequence was my favorite and happened to be the only non-horror segment of the bunch. “Frances” concerns Nikolai (Flanders), a kind of a low-level criminal screw-up who’s got one job – to pass along a package to Frances (Merry), a blind courier for a criminal boss. Simple enough – but Nikolai is the kind of guy who could mess up boiling an egg. You’re expecting some horrific twist so when the twist comes it comes out of left field. Who said that a horror anthology has to be all horror?

Finally, “Night Night” brings the film to a close about an exhausted father (J-P Veizaga) who is pestered by a son (S. Veizaga) who simply won’t go to bed – he’s certain that there is something terrible after him. This was the scariest sequence of the five and ends the movie on a nice note, or not-so-nice depending how you look at it. For my money, it is one of the better directed segments of the five.

There isn’t a ton of bloodshed and the special effects are minimal. It’s clear that Doesch had a minuscule budget and at times it shows on screen; for example, the “Premonition” set looks like a set rather than a lived-in home. That kind of thing can take the viewer out of the film. Still, if you can get past the low-budget production values, there is some entertainment to be had here, particularly the final two sequences although seeing Tehan in a bikini is certainly worth a look.

Doesch has an excellent eye and despite all the limitations that a micro-budget puts on a filmmaker he shows here that he has the talent and the imagination to really turn some heads. As it is, I think he has enormous promise and even if this almost has a work in progress feel to it, at least the investment of your time isn’t galling. 42 minutes for an early look at a director who has every sign of going places isn’t too much to ask.

REASONS TO GO: Doesch has a fine eye for camera angles and scene composition.
REASONS TO STAY: Some of the shorts could have used some fleshing out. Some of the low budget shows in places. Other than the final segment, I didn’t find any of the shorts excessively scary.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some profanity as well as disturbing images and situations.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Doesch was the 2017 recipient of the Amazon Filmmaker of the Year award.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon
CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/10/17: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet. Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: VHS
FINAL RATING: 4.5/10
NEXT: A Double Life

Seed (2017)

Team Nomad’s success is no shoe-in.

(2017) Documentary (Something Different) Ethan Reid, Shahar Hussein, Pulkit Mahajan, Brian Collins, Adi Abili, Milan Koch, Saheen Ali, Paul Glaser, Christopher Wellise, Peter Berger, Brent Freeman, Sean Hughes, Devin Mui, Arjun Dev Arora, Ahmed, Bettirose. Directed by Andrew Wonder

 

When most of us think of hackers, we think of pimply-faced basement-dwelling laptop rats who take out their anger on not getting laid – ever –  by disrupting legitimate websites and from time to time stealing information from major Internet sites. Sometimes we think of the Anonymous hackers who disrupt the socially unjust. We rarely think of hacking as a source for positive change.

And yet AngelHack who were one of the earliest proponents of “hack-a-thons” (competitions for hackers) have turned the innovation of these code writing iconoclasts into potential businesses with seed money coming from Silicon Valley venture capitalists and other underwriters. It’s a very big deal in the hacking community and one of the most prestigious events on the Hacking calendar. They sponsor something called Silicon Valley week where dozens of hackers/code writers/would-be entrepreneurs get together, pitch their apps to first the AngelHack board who determine if they have the stuff to go on to the big stage where they can pitch their demos to industry leaders.

It’s a situation in which the stress levels are ratcheted up to an 11. The documentary follows three teams, including Team Report Taka with spokesperson Bettirose is trying to develop an app that will save lives in their native Nairobi, Kenya; Shahar Hussein is driving for Uber in New York while his brother-in-law Ahmed is watching over their start-up in Palestine which will help businesses there hook up with couriers to deliver packages. Finally Team Nomad, led by three teens are juggling high school with their app which will allow shoppers to take a picture of an item they see that they want to buy and then be taken to a site where they can buy it, something that appeals to the social media generation who can’t be bothered to look stuff up.

Each of these teams are among 14 teams from across the globe vying for interview time with venture capitalists and substantial seed money that could help their dreams take off. Each of the teams are in it for different reasons; one to change the world, another to make a better life for themselves and their families, a third just to prove they can do it.

It isn’t easy though. Team Nomad is having serious troubles getting their app to work for the demo. Shahar and Ahmed are not seeing eye to eye on their business’s future. The Report Taka team needs to be able to convince the various judges that their app is much more than a locally useful app that is worth developing for global use. The day they present after all is called Global Demo Day. The stakes are incredibly high.

This kind of film lives or dies based on how much the audience identifies with the various participants and ends up with a rooting interest for them. Team Report Taka came the closest for me; their app is one that collates reports of dumped garbage and analyzes it, helping the Kenyan government determine if it is proving a threat (garbage that collects in the rivers of Nairobi often contribute to flooding which can be severe enough to end lives). They have a difficult time communicating in English and perhaps understanding the capitalist culture that drives these kinds of things. It’s hard not to root for people who want to save lives though.

The other two teams are less altruistic. Both are working on apps that will aid e-commerce, and that’s all well and good. The teens involved with Team Nomad are often a bit cocky and considering they have a concept and not a working app makes one wonder if they are selling smoke and mirrors. Finally Shahar is maybe a bit mule-headed as is Ahmed and the two of them butt heads on some fairly basic issues. It isn’t always pretty.

Wonder has a nice visual sense and some of the shots here are really cool, but he for some reason decides to do some of the interview segments in unusual locations and positions; the Report Taka team is made to lie down on the floor like spokes on a wheel while Team Nomad is in a dark room lit by blue computer screens. I get that he wanted to get away from typical talking head tropes but it ended up being distracting and off-putting. An A for imagination but an C- for execution.

Nonetheless while the movie doesn’t really add much to the competition documentary subgenre, it is at least reasonably informative although some of the jargon may fly over the heads of those who aren’t technologically inclined. I consider myself reasonably tech-savvy and some of the things that the various participants said left me befuddled but I suppose most documentaries have their share of jargon, no?

I found the process that the teams undergo to be fascinating enough to overcome some of the films’ flaws. It’s available right now on Amazon Prime so those who are members of that service can stream the movie for free; it is also available for rent for those who are not Prime members. In any case, for those who are intrigued by how software is developed, this is a movie that will be right up your alley. For those who may prefer that how their Fandango app works be a mystery to them should probably give this one a pass.

REASONS TO GO: The process is fascinating.  Some of the cinematography is really cool.
REASONS TO STAY: It’s a little bit jargon-heavy. Sometimes the filmmaker goes a little bit overboard with the artistic license.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some profanity but not a lot of it.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The three members of Team Nomad were all 16 and 17 years old when the process started and needed to be driven to preliminary events by their parents.
BEYOND THE THEATER: Amazon
CRITICAL MASS: As of 4/11/17: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet. Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Wordplay
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Logan