Replicas

I found the trailer for Replicas to be very intriguing so I decided to see as part of my Friday night double feature.  Unfortunately, that decision was a mistake because this is a terrible movie.  William Foster (Keanu Reeves) is a scientist working at Bionyne who is trying to transfer neural pathways in the brain from a human host to a synthetic host.  His latest effort has been unsuccessful and he is feeling pressure from his boss (John Ortiz) and faces losing his funding.  When Foster takes his family on vacation they are involved in an accident that kills his wife and three children.  Grief stricken, he saves their neural pathways and coerces his colleague Ed (Thomas Middleditch) to clone their bodies so he can transfer their memories to their new brains.  When they are successful he learns the true nature of the company he works for and that his boss considers his family to be the property of Bionyne.  He figures out why his experiments have been failing and successfully transfers his own neural pathways into the synthetic host so it can fight everyone tracking his family.  While the concept for this movie is really interesting, the execution is filled with flaws.  The plot makes absolutely no sense.  How did Foster survive a car crash that killed his entire family with only a scratch on his forehead?  How was Ed suddenly able to clone three human beings after minimal success with animals?  How was Foster able to survive mapping his own neural pathways when his previous experiments required a donor who had died?   With a story this implausible I am sometimes willing to suspend my disbelief if I am given a reason to care.  There are big themes here but there is absolutely no exploration of the ethics involved in playing God.  The acting is abysmal.  Reeves is known for his flat monotone delivery but some of his line readings in this movie are so bad they elicited laughter from my audience (for the wrong reasons).  The CGI is a complete mess and the scenes where the synthetic robot attacks the bad guys (who are all wearing black suits so we can tell that they are villains) are so bad I had to wonder about the budget for this movie.  Even if you thought the trailer looked interesting definitely give this a miss!

The Upside

On Friday night I decided to see a double feature and began with The Upside.  I usually don't read reviews and make my decision to see a movie based on the trailer.  This usually works (except in the case of the second movie in my double feature) and I am certainly glad I didn't read the reviews for this movie because I probably wouldn't have seen it and I would have missed out.  Phillip Lacasse (Bryan Cranston) is a billionaire quadriplegic looking for a new caregiver.  Dell (Kevin Hart) has recently been paroled and needs to find a job to avoid going back to jail.  He applies for a job as a janitor in a high-rise building but accidentally takes the elevator to the penthouse instead of the basement and interviews with Phillip and his assistant, Yvonne (Nicole Kidman).  Phillip decides to hire the vastly unqualified Dell, against the objections of Yvonne, because he is depressed and wants a caregiver who will respect his DNR order.  As the two get to know each other, Phillip finds a will to live again and Dell starts rebuilding his relationship with his son.  This movie is so funny!  Hart and Cranston have great chemistry together and have great comedic timing (I usually find Hart to be a bit too frenetic).  Comedies are a hard sell for me but I actually laughed out loud many times, as did everyone in my packed screening.  My favorite scenes are when Dell gets some marijuana for Phillip to help with nerve pain, when Phillip takes Dell to the opera, and when Dell has to change Phillip's catheter. I also found it to be quite heartwarming which is something that I am finding to be more and more appealing.  This feel-good movie did a lot to help me get over a really long week and I recommend it!

On the Basis of Sex

Ever since I saw the documentary RBG, I've been a huge fan of Ruth Bader Ginsburg so I have been eagerly awaiting the release of On the Basis of Sex.  I was able to see a Thursday preview and it is so good.  This movie chronicles Ruth Bader Ginsbug's time as one of the first female law students at Harvard University, her inability to find a position at any NYC law firm despite graduating at the top of her class because she is a woman, her time as a professor at Rutgers Law School, and her role in a ground breaking sex discrimination case.  Ginsburg (Felicity Jones) is given a tax case by her husband Marty (Armie Hammer) in which a Denver man was denied a deduction for caring for his sick mother because he is a bachelor and caregiving roles traditionally belong to women.  Inspired to fight for the rights of women by her daughter Jane (Cailee Spaeny), she decides to take it because, if she can get a ruling on a case involving sex discrimination against a man, it will set a precedent that can be used against cases involving sex discrimination against women.  She, along with her husband and Mel Wulf (Justin Theroux) of the ACLU, files an appeal in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, writes the brief, and, despite the fact that she has very little experience arguing cases, gives an impassioned speech about how the world has changed and the law needs to change with it.  I found this movie to be incredibly inspiring because I had no idea how many laws discriminating on the basis of sex actually existed and there were many times when I wanted to cheer out loud.  There is a moment at the end when Ruth walks up the stairs to the Supreme Court to argue her next case when everyone in my screening applauded.  One of the things I really enjoyed about RBG is Ginsburg's mutually supportive marriage to Marty and it is portrayed exceptionally well in this movie (I loved the scene with Marty chopping vegetables for dinner).  Jones and Hammer give outstanding performances, especially in their scenes together.  I think I prefer RBG because it is more comprehensive but I really loved this movie and I highly recommend it!

Escape Room

Now that I have finished reviewing the movies that I saw over winter break I can catch up with the movies I've seen in the new year, the first of which was Escape Room.  It is not a great movie but I saw it at a late night screening with a rowdy crowd on opening weekend so I had a lot of fun watching it.  Six strangers are recruited to participate in a mysterious escape room for a chance to win $10,000:  Zoey (Taylor Russell), a painfully shy physics student, Ben (Logan Miller), a struggling alcoholic, Jason (Jay Ellis), a cocky stockbroker, Amanda (Deborah Ann Wolf) an Iraq War veteran suffering from PTSD, Mike (Tyler Labine) a former coal miner, and Danny (Nik Dodani), a gaming enthusiast.  It begins as a ordinary game with complex puzzles to solve as they move from one elaborate room to the next.  However, each of them have secrets which are revealed in the puzzles and the consequences for not solving the puzzles in time are deadly.  As one survivor emerges from the final room, the purpose of the game is revealed.  As I mentioned, this is not a great movie but I didn't really expect it to be.  In fact, I actually liked it more than I thought I would because of the clever premise, the design of the rooms (especially the optical illusion room), as well as the tense and suspenseful action sequences.  The biggest flaw, in my opinion, is the ending because, not only does it slow down the action in an attempt to explain it all in some really clunky scenes, the explanation lacks any credibility and includes a groan-worthy cliffhanger (a blatant bid for a sequel).  This movie could have been so much better but it wasn't awful.  Take a group of friends to a late night screening for a fun night out.

At Eternity's Gate

The last film in my winter break movie marathon was At Eternity's Gate, a tragic portrayal of Vincent Van Gogh's final years starring Willem Dafoe in the title role.  Unlike many traditional biopics which focus on one linear event after another, this film is very episodic.  Van Gogh was inspired by nature so there are many scenes of him walking through the fields of Arles, looking up at the sky with a blissful expression, painting the same tree over and over again, and even rolling around in the dirt to more fully understand its properties.  These scenes are beautifully rendered, often with the camera following Van Gogh closely as wanders through the countryside or from his point of view as he looks at something he wants to paint.  This film explores his madness with disturbing scenes of lashing out at school children for bothering him and physically posing a woman against her will for a painting.  His isolation is also explored and it is heartbreaking whenever he parts from his brother Theo (Rupert Friend), a Paris art dealer who supports him financially, and Paul Gaugin (Oscar Isaac), another painter with whom he argues over technique.  The aspect of this film that I enjoyed the most is his understanding that he sees the world differently from everyone else and that, while contemporary audiences may revile his paintings, he is creating works for people who haven't been born yet.  There is a wonderful scene when Van Gogh is visited by a priest (Mads Mikkelsen) at the asylum and he says that when he paints he touches eternity.  Dafoe gives an incredibly nuanced performance because the Van Gogh that we meet in this film is not necessarily sympathetic but Dafoe makes us feel every bit of his suffering.  While I understand what director Julian Schnabel was going for, namely to make an "artistic" film about art, I sometimes struggled while watching it because of the slow and deliberate pace.  Not everyone is going to enjoy this but it is beautiful and profound.