Dig, if you will, the pictures in the Screening Room this week:
Free State of Jones
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
For all the onscreen battles in Free State of Jones, a more persistent one dogs the film throughout, as writer/director Gary Ross struggles to find cohesion for elements that too often conflict. The historical drama at the film’s core is so vast, it feels as though Ross just couldn’t bring himself to restrain any part of it.
Matthew McConaughey stars as Newton Knight, a farmer near Jones County, Mississippi who deserted the Confederate Army during the Civil War. As the numbers of fellow deserters grew, Knight led what came to be known as the Knight Company, a small army of Southerners that battled the Confederacy in an attempt to establish the “Free State of Jones.”
Historians still argue over Knight’s true motivations, but the film is less than nuanced at the outset, clearly drawing Knight as a poor man refusing to die in a rich man’s war, and unable to accept “any man telling another man what he’s got to live for, or what he’s got to die for.”
Ross (The Hunger Games, Seabiscuit, Pleasantville) does find more subtlety as the film progresses, but Newton’s heroically righteous nature, albeit delivered through a committed and moving performance from McConaughey, feels manufactured. Ditto the minimal racial tensions present in a unit mixing runaway slaves and AWOL Confederates.
Conversely, amid this idealism, the film is effectively brutal in its depiction of war and the deep, ugly roots of racism. But even here, the pendulum eventually swings back to manipulation, as Ross’s aim seems to be less about learning from history and more about being proud of how badly we feel.
Sparring tones continue, most specifically when the Knight Company uprising is woven through details of a decades-later jury trial involving one of Knight’s descendants from his marriage to a former slave (Gugu Mbatha-Raw). Bridges between each thread are built with dry, history-lecture sequences that are equal parts salient info and narrative distraction.
Ross’s passion is understandable. This truly is an incredible piece of America’s history, but one so expansive that an approach this broad is hampered from the start. Free State of Jones leaves fine performances and effectively-crafted sequences strewn across the battlefield, but the emotional connection needed to bind them remains just over that next hill.
The Shallows
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
Is The Shallows – Blake Lively’s new flick about a surfer trying to survive a shark attack – simply a girl power exercise wrapped in a sandy bikini?
Yes.
Still, it gets as much right as it does wrong.
Lively plays Nancy, a med student alone on a secluded, secret beach in Mexico. She’s here to be alone, to mourn, to surf. As the local drops her off on the beach and refuses her offer of cash, he asks how she plans to get back to town.
Excellent question.
There’s a great deal of convenient idiocy in this screenplay, but director Jaume Collet-Serra – who is no comrade of subtlety – actually handles most of these items deftly. After a few middling horror efforts, Collet-Serra made his name with a string of Liam Neeson films, so he knows a little something about a solitary figure fighting deadly odds.
Lively does a fine job in what is essentially a one-surfer-show. Nancy is smart. Not smart enough to avoid surfing alone in an isolated area of a foreign land, but a different kind of smart. MacGyver smart. And it’s with a balance of delicacy and grit that she just about makes you believe the ludicrous.
The Shallows is gorgeously filmed – and not just Lively. Yes, the camera hugs her form more closely than a wet suit, but Collet-Serra treats the surf, sky and sand with as much ardor. A generous reviewer might even say he’s creating a parallel – something about breathtaking beauty that belies serious ferocity. I am not generous enough to buy that theory, but I am generous enough to throw it out there.
For stretches, The Shallows will have you believing you’re watching a tense, thoughtful survival drama. Eventually the shark becomes a vengeful-mythical-beast-warrior-machine-monster, and any hint of credibility is lost at sea. This is the age of Sharknado – maybe Collet-Serra didn’t think he could keep his audience’s attention until the shark tried to scale something with his teeth?
Whatever the case, it’s a wild mashup of efforts: equal parts empowerment and ogling, survival thriller and Sharkasaurus Rex.
Independence Day: Resurgence
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
Have you ever seen a fast food commercial where the burger looks fantastic, then you get there and it’s basically day old dog food on a flattened-out bun?
Say hello to Independence Day: Resurgence, a preposterous, tedious filet of sequel churned out with all the joy of a kid’s meal without the toy surprise.
It’s been twenty years since the “War of 1996,” and banding together to beat back the alien horde has brought the entire would together in a hand-holding singalong of peace. Things are good, made even better by the advances that came from getting a look at all that high-flying alien technology.
Former President Whitmore (Bill Pullman) isn’t doing as well, suffering persistent dreams and flashbacks about the aliens, even as the big 20th anniversary victory celebration is fast approaching.
His daughter Patricia (Maika Munroe) is engaged to Jake (Liam Hemsworth), a hotshot pilot who lives on the edge! We know this because he’s told “You’re grounded!” barely five minutes in. You think that’s gonna stop Jake when stuff gets real? Ha, he laughs in your general direction! Jake and fellow pilot Dylan (Jessie T. Usher) have a serious beef, so it’s a total surprise when they have to put all that aside and crack wise as they fight the next alien invasion.
Hey. it’s summer, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to eat some popcorn and watch aliens explode, but Resurgence is proof than more can definitely be less.
Director/co-writer Roland Emmerich returns from part one, determined to re-create as many scenes as he can and up the ante on ships, aliens, and overall bombast.
Check and triple check.
The script is often groan-inducing, highlighted by lines no more subtle than “You’re the only family I got!” and the appearance of a helpful African warlord who can read the alien alphabet.
Just when you’re thinking (hoping) this might actually be a sequel to “Mars Attacks!” Whitmore delivers another “We’re going to live on” speech amid the swelling strings and waving flags and you’re right back on planet lazy
Independence Day was no classic, but it was fun, something Resurgence couldn’t spell if it gave an F.
