bironic

Okay, I guess I'm starting a new post, because this review is longer than usual.

Previously:

Post 1: The Reckoning, Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World,* Inkheart,* Priest
Post 2: Wimbledon,* A Beautiful Mind, Legion
Post 3: A Knight’s Tale, Margin Call,* The Secret Life of Bees, Mortdecai
Post 4: Firewall,* The Heart of Me, The Da Vinci Code, The Tourist, Blood
*includes fic recs

And now, the conclusion:


Transcendence

Plot: Scientist wife Rebecca Hall and doctor-scientist (?) friend Paul Bettany try to save terminally ill scientist husband Johnny Depp by uploading him into an artificial intelligence template he created. Things may or may not go as planned.

This was just as dumb as expected, but also in some ways better? Like, they tried to science, they tried to ground their techno-thriller in the real potential of artificial intelligence and they very likely employed advisors to help out with the TED talk-style presentations and the near-future middle-step scientific accomplishments on the way to the singularity, but as we know, such advisors can only make recommendations that serve the narrative drive. So we get lines like:

"I've tried everything. Language processing, cryptography, coding. I can't figure it out."

And facepalmy statements like:

"Most men of science are blind to the tension between technology's promise and its peril."

Plus the usual visual shorthand: Computer screens! Server rooms! Math! Wires! FANCIER server rooms!

Paul Bettany even got to put his hand over his mouth and say, "My God."

Portrayal of wife went back and forth from decent to wincy. Woman gets to be a scientist too, hooray! Then woman does something stupid for love while man warns her of obvious dangers.

So, yes, the technology and the action got more ridiculous as time went on. e.g. That is not how electricity works. e.g. Not everything is networked at the same time. At times it felt like we were reenacting Independence Day, the Battlestar Galatica reboot and stories like Her. I also wish the initial stages of the "transcendence" had been more unheimlich. Further in the uncanny valley. And I don't know why this movie and so many other movies feel like they have to tell you the end before they get started.

However, many enjoyable moments along the way:

- Surprise appearances from Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman, Lukas Haas, Xander Berkeley

- Use of Jorma Kaukonen's song Genesis, which I used to play as a lullaby every night for months after college. It probably didn't need to play for a third time in the closing credits, but the first appearance was a nice surprise and the second called attention to the aptness of the lyrics with regard to Depp maybe/maybe not evolving in a machine and Hall being unwilling to accept the possibility of his death, as the whole movie turned out to really be about their relationship: "The time has come for us to pause, and think of living as it was. Into the future we must cross. I'd like to go with you."

- Paul Bettany got the first and last scenes to himself and had a substantial role in between. He played the character who understood the science while also having a moral center, as demonstrated by his healthy wariness for rapid advancement in AI without ethical guidance.

- Aesthetically speaking, they gave him Semi-Unflattering Scientist Glasses, but he took them off a lot and then they disappeared altogether once Action started happening. He was one of those everyday sorta-action heroes who starts out in suits and scrubs and eventually dresses in button-downs and khakis and looks rugged and cool because he jog-runs down hallways and rolls his sleeves up his forearms. You know the type. Mm. Kudos as well to the makeup team, or to the director for allowing the makeup team to do this, because when he got punched in the eye, in the next scene it looked like he'd gotten punched in the eye.

- Also I am pleased to have been given a visual reference for Paul Bettany hugging a woman tight. As I am struggling through a draft of a fic where that is pretty much the whole plot.

- Last but not least, an unexpected delight was how the central relationship for a portion of the movie became kind of sort of almost poly. Depp was dying. Depp loved his wife Hall. Depp knew Hall and Bettany had great affection for each other. Bettany loved Hall and cared deeply for Depp, and expressed physical affection for both of them. Depp basically told Bettany that when he was gone, he wanted the two of them to be together. It was so easy to see how the three of them could have had a relationship while Depp was still alive. Hardly any work need be done in fic. Hm, I should go see if there is any. It wasn't that kind of movie, but it would have been nice if it had been.

And those are the highlights. Ha: Current headline on RSS feed: "What makes algorithms go awry?"

ETA: I enjoyed this little article from stylefrizz.com about character traits reflected in costumes. Bettany in neutrals & naturals, Hall in black and white.


After the Rain

Not to be confused with a samurai movie of the same name, from the same year (1999).

If Paul Bettany hadn't been in this, I might never have heard of it. Which means never having heard of the 1992 play it was adapted from, Soweto's Burning. And that would have been a shame, I think.

The movie itself was all right—second half or third third better than the beginning—and a bit surreal to watch his particular performance, young and volatile, desperate and ugly and vulnerable, like watching Gary Oldman as Sid Vicious or Joe Orton. Skinny and pale and wide-eyed and, heh, arguably overacting.

It was about three people during the crumbling of apartheid in Johannesburg and Soweto. The first half/two-thirds was rough because it played more like a history lesson than a drama, not helped by pacing problems and the film's fairly low production standards. Also, the characters felt more like demographic representations and embodied political stances than people: troubled white soldier, black man barely suppressing his anger, white woman caught in the middle. And once again, we got the end before we got the rest of the story.

But it did pick up. It had interesting things to say about indoctrinated intolerance, and about how conflicts between that indoctrination and innate compassion can tear a person apart, and about educating the next generation with the hope of a better future. It had some nice visual metaphors about shifting power.

The best parts felt like watching a play, these three characters (or sometimes two) enclosed in a flat hashing out their relationships and race relations, so it was no surprise to find during the end credits that that's exactly what it was based on. In fact, the movie was written and directed by the original playwright, Ross Kettle. The acting was good, but I suspect the play was better. It's probably at least a decade past being performed, but if it were ever nearby, I'd like to see it.

PB factor: Enjoyed various moments involving lithe body and wide-open expressions. Did not enjoy (enjoyed not-enjoying?) the thug stuff. Couldn't tell about the Afrikaans accent.

And I guess that's that.

ETA: No, wait, haha, there's a vid that appears to be the only other footage of this movie on YouTube. Warning for domestic violence, stuttery cuts and unintended (I assume) emo-hilarity.


Creation

Shallow it may be, but as with Master & Commander, the hair was distracting and sadly unsexy.

The movie was all right. It didn't screw up any basic principles of evolutionary theory, although it won't convince any creationists or even answer most questions for people wanting to really understand natural selection. Which is fine; it's a feature film, and its focus is on the personal/familial rather than the scientific. It had a lot of science vs. religion polarity, which gets tiresome fast, although thematically it made sense, as Darwin's book was basically heretical, and at least according to the movie adaptation of the memoir by Darwin's great-great-grandson, Darwin and his wife fell on opposite sides of that line as well. I suspect it wasn't nearly so clear-cut, but haven't looked into it yet.

There were several regrettable choices made in the film, including the opening vignette involving some "primitive, dirty" natives of South America; it may have been thematically apt in its discussion of paternalistic figures trying to direct human evolution, but the word choice, while perhaps "period appropriate," was wincy. And the first half or so was slow. Yet there were some moments of real beauty. Mostly I'm thinking of the story of Jenny the orangutan. I don't want to ruin anything if you haven't seen the movie and plan to. For me, that was one of two emotional high (low) points. The other came when Darwin finally confronted his grief at the hydrotherapy institution. The script connected both of these to each other and to Darwin's understanding of evolution in different and affecting ways.

Interesting to watch a depiction of someone struggling with psychosomatic illness-slash-writer's block due to a combination of trying to suppress deep grief and grasping how much of a societal upheaval his book was likely to cause. Also interesting to watch a real life married couple play husband and wife, especially in the montage scene where they reconnect in bed after years of emotional and physical distance. tl;dr wondered how Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly decided to make Mr. & Mrs. Darwin's smiles and kisses and somnolent spooning positions similar to and different from their own.

I also enjoyed the father/daughter science bonding, for personal reasons.

Lastly, enjoyed the similarities to Stephen Maturin in Master & Commander, another naturalist who delighted in studying beetles and birds and visited the Galapagos. Or perhaps that's saying it backwards, as while watching Master & Commander I kept thinking how much Maturin was like Darwin. Someone on Tumblr posted a gif set that points out the visual parallels between the movies as well.



Kiss Kiss (Bang Bang)

Not the one with Robert Downey Jr., but a British action film from 2001. And now I know why it's not easily available: it's pretty terrible.

Things I did not like: the main character (Stellan Skarsgard), the main plot, the music, the acting, the heavy noir and/or noir-satire style, the aesthetic.

Things I did like: (1) seeing Sienna Guillory's character come on to Paul Bettany's, because it felt oddly like support for Resa/Dustfinger in the Inkheart movie; (2) watching Skarsgard's hitman mentor and Bettany's hitman protegé crawl to each other after heavy fire, hold hands and caress faces, and wondering if they would just come out and kiss.

Fast-forwarded through most of it. Conclusion: Forgettable.


Still to come, at a leisurely pace: After the Rain, Dogville, Kiss Kiss (Bang Bang) (not that one, the other one), maybe Gangster #1, and whatever the Charles Darwin one is called. Creation.