Captive State
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
Imagine, if you will, that someone bullied their way to a takeover of the government. Imagine that they exploited the poor for labor while gutting Earth’s natural resources for their own gain, leaving a husk of a planet behind.
Imagine that they enacted blunt order with no thought to human rights, as they built walls, separated families and cordoned off neighborhoods to keep the poor a safe distance from the wealthy.
Let’s say they also passed themselves off as some almost holy enterprise that rewarded compliance and adoration.
Right, not such a stretch.
Oh, it’s aliens? That would actually be a lot easier to accept.
Filmmaker Rupert Wyatt returns to the theme of his greatest success, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, with his latest SciFi adventure, Captive State.
Wyatt drops us into the heart of Chicago some ten or so years after an alien invasion. Earth has long since accepted the aliens as their new legislature, and terrestrial natives are now either blindly following command with the hope of reward, or they are not.
Gabriel Drummond (Ashton Sanders, Moonlight) can’t quite make up his mind. His brother Rafe (Jonathan Majors) is the symbol of the revolution, but Gabriel just wants to get out of Dodge and try for a new life.
Lawman William Mulligan (John Goodman, wonderful as always) won’t let him. What emerges is an intricate and often clever thriller about submission and resistance.
Though Wyatt’s allegory is clear, it doesn’t drown the story itself. Even the most thinly drawn character has purpose and dimension, the ensemble talent assembled here delivering memorable but understated turns.
Vera Farmiga offers a particularly poignant performance, though her screen time can’t reach past 2 minutes. Likewise, James Ransone, Alan Ruck and Lawrence Grimm balance desperation, courage and hope in brief episodes that help Wyatt create the bleak but almost optimistic tone.
The look is a bit murky, the 1984-style occupations a tad convenient and the lack of one single point of view character limits audience investment in character, and therefore, in the outcome. But the aliens look pretty cool, John Goodman offers a twisty, melancholy performance that’s worth seeing, and there’s rarely a bad time to be reminded of the power of resistance.
Wonder Park
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
Credit any film that can tap into the audience’s sense of wonder.
Wonder Park is that movie. I wonder why the film was called Wonder Park when the amusement park at the center of the film—and of little June’s imagination—is actually called Wonderland.
I wonder who directed the film, because there’s no one listed on imdb or the film’s own credits.
I wonder if there was no director at all, and that’s why the first act runs for 35 minutes, dumping us headlong into a second act full of characters we don’t feel connected to, regardless of the fact that they are the talking animals we’ve been trained to love and want to purchase.
(Fun fact: Wonder Park may or may not have been directed by David Feiss, who reportedly took over after Dylan Brown was fired over sexual misconduct allegations but is uncredited here. Makes you wonder.)
I also wonder how that bear ended up at the top of the roller coaster hill, because there is literally no explanation for it at all and yet it leads to a climactic scene. I wonder if the filmmaker – whoever that might have been – knows that there is no payoff, no matter the visual wonder, if there is no set up. The bear can’t just be at the top of the roller coaster hill. If he can magically wake up there without having to get up there, then he can magically wake up at the bottom, so where’s the fun in that?
There’s not a lot of fun in this movie. There is a lot of talent: Jennifer Garner, Mila Kunis, John Oliver, Ken Jeong, Kenan Thompson, Matthew Broderick. And the animation looks good. There is also an admirably nerdy underpinning that encourages kids—girls, in particular—to appreciate the excitingly destructive qualities of math and science.
As is often the case with powerful and memorable animated films – Up, Bambi, Dumbo – Wonder Park is also about grief. It’s grief and fear that cause mischievous little genius June (Sofia Malie and Brianna Denski, depending on the age of the character) to lose her spark.
With the help of science, math, girl power and imagination, she can face her grief and fear and come out the other side.
Wait, is that how it works?
No. Math and science can help with a lot of things, but grief is grief and it just needs to be accepted. This trickery to overcome it is a cheat, as is the film’s ending, not to mention that roller coaster bear moment.
Good lord, I wonder how this got made.
Five Feet Apart
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
Haley Lu Richardson is a very talented young actress. Director Justin Baldoni seems to have very good intentions. Neither can save Five Feet Apart from crawling through the heap of Young Adult angst as the unholy love child of Nicholas Sparks and Lars von Trier.
Richardson is Stella, an optimistic cystic fibrosis patient who vlogs about her experiences with an encouraging smile. Hospitalized for a new drug trial, she meets fellow “CF’er” Will, a dreamboat with an attitude and a darker prognosis.
Fears of bacteria bring strict orders for Stella and Will to always remain at least six feet apart. But when love blooms…..
Stories of young forbidden love have been sprouting since the Capulets and Montagues, but the biggest surprise in Five Feet Apart is that it didn’t start as a YA novel. Screenwriters Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis wear the hats, here, working through as many formulaic and manipulative opportunities as possible.
Though many health care issues are conveniently skirted, some honest moments about the struggles of CF patients find a mark, thanks mainly to some warm chemistry between Richardson (Columbus, The Edge of Seventeen, Split) and Sprouse (Big Daddy, TV’s Riverdale). But as the overly orchestrated suffering continues to mount, the entire CF storyline starts smelling of the easiest path to teenage tears.
Baldoni, whose My Last Days web series benefits a variety of charities, may have his heart in the right place. And there is certainly talent in this cast, which Richardson leans on to deliver the line “Thank you for saying something real!” without a trace of irony.
But the boxes for plaintive music, closing narration, and the gay best friend are all checked. Plus, the life lessons that are dictated to us because that’s easier than building a story that resonates strongly enough to let us realize things on our own. So much YA drama is anchored by this cheap enlightenment, and there is plenty here to wallow in.
So depending on your side of that fence, the bar may have been raised. Or lowered.
But Haley Lu, though.
Climax
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
Hey, club kids, it’s a Gaspar Noe dance party!
For a while, anyway, but if that’s all you’re expecting from Climax, you don’t know your Noe.
2015’s Love showed the boundary pusher’s tender side via some graphic 3D porn. But now writer/director Noe is back in sensory-pummeling mode, pulling from his usual playbook for a all-out psychedelic bacchanal soaked in body fluids, drugs and EDM.
After a mysterious opening mix of bloody snow angels and claims of “true events,” Noe showcases audition interviews for a French dance troupe before jumping ahead to the group’s transfixing final rehearsal.
Selva (Sofia Boutella) and the crew are ready for the show, so now it’s time to let off some steam as only they can. DJ Daddy (Kiddy Smile), drop some beats!
Noe’s usual reliance on extended takes, stationary cameras and overhead shots makes the dance sequences utterly intoxicating, the performers’ energy creating exciting visual beauty and a palpable exuberance for their art. These seductive odes to dance are interspersed with sometimes graphically sexual conversations between the dancers, sharpening character edges and laying down an interpersonal framework that will soon be turned on its head.
“What is wrong with you all?”
In what seems like an instant, suspicion, mob rule and primal desire overtakes the company. The dancers’ movements become monstrosities bathed in pulsating rhythms, visual disorientation, wanton violence and illicit sex.
What spurred this sea change, and who is to blame? Noe turns that mystery into a greater conversation about the opportunity of birth, the impossibility of life and the extraordinary experience of death, and as is his wont, batters your senses while doing it.
He is also again wearing his heart on his screen, with a stacked movie collection directly calling out influences from Possession to Suspiria. But Climax is unforgettably a Noe vision, one of his most concise, streamlined and clearly inspired.
It is 97 minutes of can’t-look-away intensity, a bold experience that may leave you asking “what just happened?” while you look for a nice place to lie down.
But oh, those dreams you’ll be having.
