The Uprising

Last night my nephew and I went to see The Uprising in a packed theater.  We were both really excited for this movie and we both liked it.  After the Black Death decimates the population, England is in need of revenue and the council, including Sir Robert Hales (Tom Hollander) and the Archbishop of Canterbury (Stephen Dillane), who rules for the weak and ineffective 14-year-old King Richard II (Woody Norman) decides to increase taxes for the peasants. A Ploughman (Andrew Garfield), who is barely surviving after the death of his wife and family, objects to the new tax and kills the soldier who tries to arrest him for resisting.  Soon his entire village stands with him and this inspires revolts across the country.  He reluctantly joins with John Ball (Jamie Bell), an outspoken priest, and Wat Tyler (Cosmo Jarvis), a soldier, to lead a march on London to petition the king about their grievances.  However, the king's council advises him not to meet with them and the peasants sack London in response.  The king, who suffers from nightmares of mobs attacking him, eventually meets with the peasants and the Ploughman persuades him to grant charters of self-determination and he also gives his tacit approval for them to bring the council to justice themselves.  When the peasants meet the king to receive the charters, they are betrayed by him and his new advisor William Walworth (Jonny Lee Miller) but this leads to unexpected consequences when the small band of survivors encounter him again.  I found the true story of the Peasants' Revolt to be both compelling and incredibly moving, especially in light of the fact that history seems to be repeating itself with corrupt leaders who are out of touch with the suffering of the people, and I actually really liked the ending (although it has been very divisive). Garfield does a great job as a simple man who unexpectedly sparks a revolution that he doesn't know how to control and I was especially impressed by his quiet anguish.  All of the supporting performances are also very strong but I was really struck by Katherine Waterston as Joan of Kent, particularly her silent response to her son's treachery.  I do have criticisms about the pacing because the conflict is set in motion with breakneck speed without much exposition and I didn't always know what was happening because the editing is often disjointed.  Also, Paul Greengrass is known for his immersive hand-held camera work and, while it is effective in the battle sequences, it is very distracting in the quieter moments (some scenes even look out of focus).  I loved the story even if I didn't always love the execution so I would recommend it.

Hope

Last night I went back to the Broadway (my happy place) to see Hope, a movie I have been anticipating ever since it premiered at Cannes earlier this year, and it is absolutely wild!  When Ko Sung-ki (Zo In-sung) and a group of his friends discover a bull that was killed by an unknown but unusually large predator lying in the middle of the road, he calls his cousin Ko Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min), the police chief of the small South Korean village of Hope Harbor, to investigate.  The young men think it might be a tiger so Bum-seok sends them into the nearby forest to search while he investigates the village.  He discovers more dead livestock and several dead people before he sees that something large has rampaged through the streets.  As he slowly walks through the carnage, he encounters several people, including a retired colonel named Ahn Nak-yeon (Lee Sang-hee), who have survived attacks by a large and seemingly indestructible creature until he, too, is pursued by it.  He and Im Sung-ae (Hoyeon), a rookie on the police force, are eventually able to kill the creature and, in the aftermath, they learn why it attacked the village and that there are more of them in the forest.  Meanwhile, Sung-ki and his friends discover what the creatures are (sort of) but they are attacked until only he is left alive.  Bum-seok, Nak-yeon, and Sung-ae rush to the forest to rescue Sung-ki which leads to an epic show-down (sort of).  I found this a bit confounding but it hardly matters because it is just so entertaining.  The tension builds and builds with the creature always one step ahead of Bum-soek as he tracks it through the streets and it is almost unbearable because you only see the devastating effects of the creature rather than the creature itself for almost an hour of the runtime (the camera work in these scenes is brilliant).  The action sequences are an absolute adrenaline rush and I was holding my breath during several thrilling high speed car chases and an equally thrilling chase on horseback through the forest.  The creatures, portrayed by Alicia Vikander, Michael Fassbender, Taylor Russell, and Cameron Britton, look great but the CGI is sometimes really wonky when they move and, because they are so much larger than the humans, the perspective is weirdly skewed and the distance between them is frequently off during the chases.  A lot of the dark comedy, which did make me laugh out loud (I especially enjoyed a running joke in which Bum-seok questions where everyone got the guns they are using), is sometimes really jarring in the middle of all of the destruction and the pacing grinds to a halt in the second act with unnecessary and lengthy scenes.  Finally, all of the spectacle is ultimately meaningless because we know so little about the creatures and their motivation and, just when we start to learn something, the screen suddenly goes to black (I was actually shocked when it ended and I was not alone judging from the response of my audience).  However, I have to say that I had an absolute blast watching this because it is so completely bonkers and I think people will either love it or hate it!

Colony

The second movie in my double feature at the Broadway last night was Colony and I found it very entertaining and compelling.  A disgruntled biologist named Seo Young-cheol (Koo Kyo-hwan) deliberately releases a virus he engineered at a biotechnology conference being held in a high-rise building in Seoul, South Korea, and informs the police that he has ingested the only antidote.  Those infected by the virus immediately mutate into violent and aggressive zombies and soon all but a small group of survivors, led by a controversial biotechnology professor named Kwon Se-jeong (Gianna Jun), are affected so the government seals the building under a military quarantine.  As the trapped survivors attempt to elude the zombies, they are horrified to discover that the virus has given them a collective hive mind and that they all share any sensory input received by one.  This allows them to evolve and adapt to any strategy the survivors use to escape.  They are forced to search the building for Young-cheol because he is their only hope for an antidote but he is also their biggest threat because he controls the zombies.  This is incredibly suspenseful because the survivors must travel from floor to floor to escape from zombies who are always one step ahead of them.  The character design for the zombies, including the prostheses and makeup, as well as the way they contort their bodies make them terrifying.  The action sequences are epic and I loved the synchronized movements used by the zombies as they receive new input, particularly the scene in which they are overwhelmed by faulty information and devolve to their primitive state.  Finally, I found the message about the dangers of groupthink to be very thought-provoking and I loved that Se-jeong and another biotechnologist named Gong Seol-hee (Shin Hyun-been), two women who are outliers in their field and think for themselves, are the ones who stop the zombies.  This is a fresh take on the zombie genre and I highly recommend it.

The Sun Never Sets

Since the mainstream releases were a bust this weekend I decided on an indie double feature at the Broadway last night.  I started with The Sun Never Sets mostly because I loved the beautiful Alaskan scenery featured in the trailer but I ended up enjoying it.  Wendy (Dakota Fanning) is a thirty-something woman who is in a long-term relationship with Jack (Jake Johnson), an older man with two children from a previous marriage.  He is very set in his ways and does not share her passion for the great outdoors but, more importantly, he has no desire to get married again or have more children.  She has adapted to fit into his life because she loves him but her reaction to the news that her best friend Lindsay (Debby Ryan) is pregnant has him worried that she might regret her decision not to have children in the future.  He suggests that they take a break for six months so she can explore her options and decide if she really wants to be with him on his terms.  She objects but he finally coerces convinces her and she goes on several amusing blind dates.  While on one of these dates, she runs into Chuck (Cory Michael Smith), an ex-boyfriend who has recently returned to Anchorage, and she resumes a relationship with him.  This makes Jack extremely jealous and he suddenly wants her back on any terms but now she is unsure.  Jack then begins dating Sara (Karley Sciortino), a woman his age with whom he is very compatible.  Chuck begins exhibiting the behavior that made Wendy break up with him in the first place and, when she learns about Sara, she is jealous and wants Jack back.  Confusion (and many screaming matches) ensues.  What I especially liked is that the characters are complicated, flawed, and messy because I think they really reflect the uncertainty that many young adults feel when their lives don't look like everyone else's (I definitely went through this when I was in my early thirties).  I found it very interesting that the free-spirited and immature Chuck is obviously meant to be the villain but Jack, who is more settled and responsible, is also problematic because he is so controlling and manipulative (one scene, in particular, in which he is trying to get her to come home with him is extremely disturbing in my opinion).  This is why I loved the final resolution because it is so empowering that she doesn't settle. Fanning gives an incredibly nuanced performance, one of her very best, because Wendy is often frustrating but you still like her enough to root for her to succeed.  I wanted to see more of the Alaskan wilderness and the bickering between the characters does go on a bit longer than it needs to but I liked this and recommend it to fans of romantic dramas.

Onslaught

There were three new releases in theaters over the long Labor Day weekend, including By Any Means, Fall 2: Deadpoint, and Onslaught, but because I am not a big fan of Mark Walhberg and because I don't particularly like heights, my nephew and I defaulted to Onslaught last night.  Let's just say that it wasn't a good weekend for new movies.  Celeste (Adria Arjona) is a former Army sniper suffering from PTSD who now manages a trailer park in a remote desert in New Mexico.  At a nearby top secret government facility, the maniacal Nazi scientist Dr. Hans Krammer (Dan Stevens) is leading an experimental program to develop a group of super soldiers who do not have a conscience, who do not feel pain, and who will not stop until the mission is complete.  During a training exercise, the latest subjects, known as the Crybaby (Tyler Hall), the Cockroach (Dave Campbell), and the Butcher (Alex Pereira), escape from the compound and terrorize the civilian population.  They end up at the trailer park and kill the majority of the residents until Celeste, her young daughter (Blake Kennedy), a grizzled Vietnam veteran (Reginald VelJohnson), and a police officer (Eric Wareheim) make a stand against them.  Meanwhile, a government operative named Cyrus (Drew Starkey) is called in to contain the situation but is revealed to be working with Dr. Krammer's widow Hanna (Rebecca Hall) to observe the effects of the experiment.  This is an obvious pastiche of much better slasher movies from the 1980s, especially those of John Carpenter, and I was really disappointed by the action sequences because, while some of them are suitably fun and gory (particularly the one at a convenience store), the super soldiers spend more time posing in silhouette than attacking and the final confrontation is very anticlimactic.  There are some weird tonal shifts (Stevens and Starkey are both little freaks in some shocking scenes that are completely superfluous) as well as commentary about the military that is introduced and then goes nowhere.  Arjona does a good job with what she is given but her character is thinly drawn and the belabored connection between Celeste and the Butcher does not have much impact. This is definitely one you can miss (maybe we should have seen By Any Means instead).

Note:  My nephew and I were the only ones in the theater (that should have been our first clue) and I lost count of how many times we looked at each other with a WTF expression on our faces.