Serenity (2019)

Captains cantankerous.

(2019) Thriller (Aviron) Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jason Clarke, Djimon Hounsou, Diane Lane, Jeremy Strong, Charlotte Butler, Rafael Sayegh, Michael Richard, Robert Hobbs, Kenneth Fok, Garion Dowds, John Whiteley, Edeen Bhugeloo, Redd Pepper (voice), Guillaume Silavant, Vinaya Sungkur. Directed by Steven Knight

Serenity is not a great movie. Serenity isn’t even a good movie. I’m not talking about the 2005 Joss Whedon sci-fi epic, which is a terrific movie; this is a 2019 sexy noir-lite set on a Caribbean island incongruously called Plymouth with an even more incongruous zydeco film score. I kid you not.

On said island lives the incongruously named Baker Dill (McConaughey) who is a fisherman who when not chartering his boat for wealthy tourists (and even when he is) is on the hunt for a giant tuna called, most incongruously of all, Justice. Ahab, meet Dill.

He has a fairly laid-back island existence (he IS Matthew McConaughey after all) enjoying a torrid affair with a local cat lady (Lane), but all that goes out the window when his ex-wife Karen (Hathaway) shows up with an indecent proposal; to take her abusive new husband (Clarke) out to see, murder him, and let the sharks take care of the body. What’s an island boy to do?

The movie has a terrific cast full of Oscar winners and nominees as well as Hounsou as Baker’s first mate and Strong as an oddly persistent fishing equipment salesman. This is one of those films that you simply can’t take seriously. Don’t try to inject logic into it, just kind of go with it. There is a twist in the film but I can’t tell you about it without ruining the film, which is a shame because it’s really the best thing about the movie, unless you have a thing for McConaughey’s bare ass, which gets shown off to fair effect several times throughout the flick.

In the end, I couldn’t really get past the ridiculous dialogue, or the movie’s waste of a good cast, although to their credit they do commit to their roles. I suppose you could see this if you own Prime and you’ve binged everything else; it’s not horrible but it’s just not very good.

REASONS TO SEE: The twist is a decent one.
REASONS TO AVOID: The score doesn’t really match the tone of the film.
FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of profanity, some bloody images and a fair amount of sexuality.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The movie was filmed in Mauritius where a scandal was created when that country’s Prime Minister was accused of misappropriating funds to support the film.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AMC On Demand, AppleTV, Fandango Now, Google Play, Microsoft, Movies Anywhere, Redbox, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 6/7/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 20% positive reviews, Metacritic: 37/100
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Identity
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: Return to Hardwick

Oceans

Underwater, turtles become sprinters.

(DisneyNature) Narrated by Pierce Brosnan. Directed by Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud

The oceans are vast, covering nearly three quarters of our planet and yet humans have laid eyes on only 5% of it. It makes up the largest territory of our planet and yet what we know about what lives there is infinitesimal compared with what there is to know.

As our technology has evolved, so has our ability to study the creatures of our seas. Some, like the bottle-nose dolphin and the blue whale, are creatures who swim close to the surface and as a result, we’ve been able to study them at some length. Others exist at greater depths, or swim in places that are more difficult for humans to access. Even these remote places, however, are becoming more and more reachable with submersibles that can withstand greater pressures, high-tech scuba apparatus and underwater cameras that can take amazing footage.

This is the second in what is slated to be an annual Earth Day event by Disney’s nature documentary division (last year, they released Earth to much acclaim). While Disney is distributing these movies, it should be noted that both Earth and Oceans were made by documentarians in England and France, respectively and were financed and produced outside of the Mouse House.

Still, the images here are magnificent, from the stately blue whale migration to the antics of sea otters and dolphins, from the weird and mysterious spider crabs to the serene and beautiful jellyfish. There are orcas and sharks, to be sure, and gulls dive-bombing for sardines, clouds of krill and schools of yellowfin tuna. There are squid-like creatures undulating through the liquid world with scarf-like streamers trailing them like a Spanish dancer, and tiny eels dancing in a strange ballet on the ocean floor. There are beautiful clownfish darting in and out of the Great Barrier Reef and penguins in the Antarctic, clumsy clowns on the ice but graceful and sleek in the water.

In its own way, Oceans is a beautiful movie but I’m wondering if there isn’t a bit of overkill here. After last year’s Earth and the latest BBC/Discovery Channel epic nature documentary series “Life”, Oceans feels almost like too much of a good thing.

The other quibble is with the narration. Pierce Brosnan is a fine actor but he doesn’t make a great narrator; his voice lacks the gravitas of a James Earl Jones or even a Sigourney Weaver. In all fairness, the narration he is given to read isn’t very inspirational and lacked the humor Disney nature documentaries are known for.

Still, that’s not what you come to a movie like this for. You come for amazing images and to see things you’ll never be able to see with your own eyes. The way to approach a movie like Oceans is to let the images sweep over you, wash you away and take you to the deep blue. It is as alien a world as anything George Lucas has ever devised and yet it is on our doorstep.

Asking the question “What is the ocean,” as the narration posits at the movie’s beginning, dumbs down the movie. Unless you’re a very young child, you know what the ocean is and clearly Disney is going for parents with very young children. While young children will ooh and ahh over the pictures, they don’t have the attention span to last the entire 90 minutes of the film. The trick is to get the same sense of wonder from adults, which they do nicely. It then becomes unnecessary to talk down to the audience by asking them “What is the ocean” because the questions you want them to ask are “What more is the ocean” and “How can we help save it.”

There are sequences that are powerful, with a forlorn shopping cart sitting on the ocean floor (which led me more to wonder how on earth it got there) and garbage floating on the ocean’s surface sending the requisite ecological message which should have been stronger; a segment that showed species that are now extinct was excised for the American version. Perhaps Disney didn’t want children to dwell on the harsh realities, but then why show baby turtles being picked off by frigate birds if that’s the case?

The co-directors were responsible for the much-superior Winged Migration and to their credit to capture some amazing sequences, but quite frankly I wasn’t wowed. Oceans turns out to be less of an educational tool than a new age video, and to my way of thinking our oceans deserved a better movie.

REASONS TO GO: Some very spectacular and beautiful footage, as well as amazing behavioral mannerisms of creatures both familiar and unfamiliar.

REASONS TO STAY: Perhaps a victim of Earth’s success; didn’t stack up favorably. Brosnan’s narration didn’t carry enough gravitas.

FAMILY VALUES: Perfect viewing for all audiences.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Director Perrin narrates the French version; his son Lancelot makes an appearance as the young boy in the movie’s framing segments at the beginning and the end.

HOME OR THEATER: Some of the magnificent footage should be seen on a big screen for full effect.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: The Express