March movie round-up

A sci-fi movie with religious allegory, a murder mystery of sorts, and of course, giant monsters. Also, no, I haven't had four spare hours to watch the Snyder Cut yet.

Killing of a Sacred Deer (Amazon): 4/10

As artsy movies that try to retell ancient stories using a modern-day setting, Killing of a Sacred Deer wasn't as awful as most (similar movies like Mother and Midsommar, though, are examples of straight-up atrocities). But this movie mostly falls apart and gets weird and senseless during the chaotic final act, which undermines the suspense the movie built up early on.

Colin Ferrell somehow simultaneously shows some acting chops and proves how similarly he plays most of his roles (his delivery is mostly stiff, but at least it makes sense for his character in this weird film). Ferrell plays a doctor who has a secret about an incident in his past he has from his family for years, but as always, the truth comes out.

Ferrell's enemy? A young kid. And herein lies the problem, as with most artsy movies. As the plot unveils itself - particularly with this kid, who has leverage on this doctor - the story starts getting ridiculously off the rails. Certain things stop making sense. It becomes too easy to poke holes in the plausibility of what happens. This kid somehow manipulates the health and safety of the doctor's family as well as his own by gaming the system of a high-class medical facility. Oh, and he somehow tricks this intelligent doctor in multiple ways (the scene with the kid's mother and the doctor was excruciating). I could go on, but the point is, while I understand the metaphor the director was going for, the movie itself was poorly executed enough to distract from what's really going on. Before the final act, it's not like the movie was all that great, but it was made well enough to earn my respect. But the absurd ending was enough to make me hate it.

Chaos Walking (Theatres): 6/10

A movie with a sci-fi premise usually doesn't need extra incentive for me to take interest, but knowing that Daisey Ridley and Tom Holland were in it admittedly heightened my interest. The highs of Chaos Walking weren't enough to overcome its lows, but I definitely didn't regret watching it.

The premise itself was an interesting idea: the thoughts we have in our head actually output in some sort of visible, audible wave of energy called 'Noise' (how creative). It's a scary thought, really. Every single thought, good or bad, has the potential to be heard and even seen by anyone. This thought bubble is a result of some weird attributes of a new planet; a large group of colonists needed to leave Earth to find new hospitable environments, and they found a primitive planet with minimal hostilities to deal with (in fact, allusions of white men overtaking Native Americans are poorly contrived here). But what starts out promising mostly turns into a bore and presents a string of continuity issues. The colonists basically recreated the old west - the people live in tiny villages with little going on outside of farming life. Somehow this incredibly high-tech society (the move takes place way out in our future) can create a massive spaceship, yet when they land, they have to revert to centuries-old lifestyles, clothing, and economical systems? At one point, there was this cool, futuristic-looking motorcycle, but it was rusting from not being used because, get this, the batteries were dead. Seriously? Things like that really ripped me out of the movie.

The 'Noise' apparently only affects men, and no women are really around. We later find out that an evil man who was the mayor of the town (played aptly by Mads Mikkelsen, whom I thought was great as Galen Erso in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) actually lied to convince his men to kill the women because they can see the men's thoughts. Mikkelsen's character and actions speak to the ridiculousness of gender roles (sometimes presented fairly, but other times not), but I appreciated that the message didn't turn into feminist propaganda. There are ways to speak against the stupid part of male pride without demeaning men or turning it into a contest with women.

The movie is based on the first book in a trilogy, which probably explains why I left with a thousand more questions than answers. Here's hoping that they don't bother making two more movies in this universe.

Deadly Illusions (Netflix): 7/10

This movie quickly hit No. 1 on Netflix after its recent release and has been a hot topic of discussion on the Internet because of its unclear ending. Even before the ambiguous ending, though, the highs and lows of this suspenseful story keeps the audience engaged throughout.

The movie centers around Mary (played by Kristin Davis, of Sex and the City fame), who is an author of a popular book series. Life is good for her: she has two kids, loves her husband, goes to the gym with her friend. But a situation arises with her publisher, and now she needs to write another book. And she's not happy about this; she evens warns her publisher that she becomes a different person when she writes, so who knows what she'll produce (a terribly transparent and predictable line of foreshadowing). She needs to hire a nanny to watch her kids while she writes from home.

Enter Grace, a young innocent-looking girl who immediately connects with the kids and proves to be helpful in other ways around the house. She's even read Mary's books. The perfect nanny.

Maybe a little too perfect, huh? Mary can't explain why, but she's physically drawn to her. That is, until she finds out that Grace might be taking an interest in Mary's husband. Oh, and Mary's gym partner turns up dead, and Mary is the suspect! Mary, of course, thinks she's being framed, possibly by Grace - footage catches a woman in Mary's clothes leaving the scene of the crime, but we can't see her face (maybe it was Grace!). So Mary tries to find out who exactly Grace is, which helps her realize that Grace isn't even employed as a nanny like she thought. She tracks down Grace's mother, and we find out another shoe-horned twist in a somewhat sloppy scene with Grace's mother: Grace has a split personality. She's also this crazy, jealous, violent killing girl. The twist mostly comes out of nowhere and falls flat for its lack of build-up and context, but sure, let's go with it.

In the final scenes, Mary stops Grace from killing her husband, then she gets Grace checked into a mental institute. Mary even visits Grace on occasion. In the last shot, we see Mary leaving the hospital after a visit.

At least, that's what we're led to think.

We see a woman leaving the institution wearing the same dress and head covering that we saw in the footage that captured Mary leaving her friend's house right after the friend was murdered. So who did it? Did Mary kill her friend? Or did Grace kill Mary at the institution and walk out pretending to be her? And thus we get our crazy ending that isn't really an ending at all. What is with these movie writers lately? Look, I like the style of leading the audience instead of handholding too much, but not supplying enough for a concrete ending is ridiculous. I mostly feel like I wasted two hours watching a movie that basically demands the audience come up with their own ending. This is not clever writing; it's lazy. If you want to watch a movie that has a seemingly ambiguous ending that isn't really that ambiguous at all, yet leaves it for the audience to decide, go watch Inception.

What adds further complexity to the whole ending is Mary's book. She's writing about things she's observing...or is she? Maybe she's writing about what she's doing instead. The idea of the movie's story mirroring the plot of the character's book within the story is meta, sure, but it's also unoriginal and a bit of a copout at this point; I've already seen one or two movies just this year that feature the exact same premise. As someone who loves writing, I'll always be up for watching movies or shows with that story, but as a viewer, I think we need to move on from that idea.

Regardless of the ending, the themes of "changing" who you are depending on whom you surround yourself with are told quite aptly. Mary has a fight with her friend that they normally wouldn't have, she gets suspicious of her husband's loyalty for no real reason (though he did withhold a financial situation from her until it came in handy, so there's that), and she even has a dream that feels so real to her, she can't help but heighten her paranoia around Grace. The skeezy, inappropriate scenes with them showing affection for each other aside, this movie thrilled more and more as it went.

Midnight Special (Amazon): 7/10

Midnight Special was a sci-fi movie at heart, but it mostly turned into a lame chase movie that focused too long on the action sequences rather than the interesting content of the story, which was the unexplainable powers of this one mystery kid.

The movie starts by posing a correlation to religion I probably should be offended by. There's a church out on this ranch, and the patrons of this church are fulfilling their calling to help Alton, this boy who has incredible powers that are highly dangerous (and visually stunning). He shoots out these insanely bright blue lights out of his eyes, though I wouldn't necessarily call him Cyclops. Anyway, Alton goes missing, so the FBI, police, and even the NSA all get involved in trying to figure out what's going on (the NSA, of course, is interested in him for their own obvious reasons). During the investigation, those organizations basically come to the conclusion that the people of this church have formed their own cult based on numeric sequences Alton reveals to them; furthermore, the people are made to appear crazy when they describe certain events that are prophetic in nature based on what the numbers reveal.

Where I should be offended (as if I wasn't already) is the lengths these people go to protect Alton, particularly Alton's dad, Roy, and Lucas, a childhood friend of Roy's. As they try to evade the FBI, Roy and Lucas shoot a cop, evade a massive manhunt, drive through barricades (with soldiers in it, no less), and do other "entertaining" action tropes all for the sake of protecting Alton and the greater good of his mission. Look, as a Christian, I'm not going to pretend that Christians haven't done stupid things like that for centuries all in the name of God; to non-Christians, Christians actually can be a detriment to faith and to God's kingdom because they aren't perfect at all. But non-Christians aren't perfect, either. And there are a lot of good things Christians do in society that don't make having faith in God seem like a crazy cult. I really hope non-Christians can look past the rough edges that Christians have (really, we ALL have rough edges) and give the faith a fair shot. Movies like this that paint a terrible, unfair picture of religion don't help because they don't provide full context.

Anyway, the NSA eventually catches Alton and brings him in for questioning. The man behind the NSA's efforts is Sevier, played by Adam Driver; if you've talked to me in recent years or read some of my other movie blogs, you would know that watching Driver is the main reason I even wanted to watch the movie in the first place. The unfortunate thing is he hardly gets any screen time until near the end. The first significant scene of his is when Sevier questions Alton. During the question, Alton convinces Sevier to set him free. The other significant scene of Driver's was when Sevier returned Alton to his parents and Lucas, but even that moment was short-lived. Heck, even a scene earlier in the movie, when he's trying to piece together information to find out where they're taking Alton is cut short (and possibly poorly edited as far as what they might've deleted). What a waste of his talent.

Soon after Alton is returned to his family, we hit the climax of the movie. As it turns out, Alton is not of this Earth (what a shocker). Then, in a rather visually appealing turn of events, an Alien society reveals itself to Earth. Apparently an interdimensional alien culture has been living on Earth parallel, invisible to the human race. Alton explains that these aliens have been observing humans for centuries from afar, which I suppose is another religious allegory (God is always with us, after all, even if we can't see Him). These aliens live in a majestic, futuristic city with towering structures made out of smooth composites. For a brief moment, I feel like this moment makes the slog through the rest of the movie worth it.

But then the movie ends, and I had more questions than answers. I suppose that's the point; the writer/director doesn't want to hold the audience's hand too much, but honestly, if you're going to take one of those lazy interpretive approaches to filmmaking, you'd better have a smarter, cooler, unique idea than what Midnight Special had to offer.

Godzilla v. Kong (HBO Max): 9/10

Oh man, did Warner Bros. know what their audience wanted from this movie. From the opening scene, they fully leaned into the theatric spectacle and cheesiness of the idea of Godzilla v. Kong. The human characters speak about the inevitable clash between the two titans as a rivalry, and they even displayed the list of enemies each titan has destroyed in his path to this point in the series as if it was a March Madness bracket, and they're ready for the championship.

Godzilla v. Kong doesn't forget its roots within the context of the series. The two titans have a history, yes, but we learn so much more about the ancient world through the series, and the lore continues to build in this one, too. We are also reminded that these creatures don't usually attack unless they feel threatened, a stark contrast to the threat they pose to humankind by their mere existence. These are not just dumb monsters fighting each other, there's thought put into their motivations, however carnal they are: there can only be one alpha in all the land.

Right away, we see both titans in action. Kong goes through his morning routine of rinsing his feet, scratching his butt and loosening up his quarterback arm by throwing trees toward the sky. The tree crashes into a Truman Show-like ceiling as we realize Kong isn't on the real Skull Island; rather, he's locked up in a giant cage, apparently for his own protection.

Meanwhile, Godzilla emerges from the ocean depths for the first time in three years and attacks the coast of Florida, perhaps signifying he feels threatened. This of course causes chaos in the news, and even a conspiracy theorist has become famous for his insider discussions on all things Godzilla.

The humans, of course, need some story to keep them busy, right? A rich guy from Apex and a flamed-out scientist look into the "hollow Earth" theory that may lead to harnessing an energy source strong enough to fight back against Godzilla. But, of course, the only way to find this energy source is to have a titan lead the way. Well, it's a good thing they have a spare titan cooped up, huh? Seriously, no one really cares about their stories, but at least it somewhat ties in to the creatures' stories.

Those who have been studying Kong now need to transport him across the waters on this giant transport ship as they voyage into the Earth's core. I'm not convinced this boat would be strong enough to hold him, even if he's locked up instead of jumping up and down on it (let alone if, say, a certain reptilian titan also climbed aboard), but I'm no engineer, and it's probably best not to think too hard about things like that.

Tried as they might to sail through the oceans while avoiding known hotspots of Godzilla's, the giant dinosaur shows up to intercept anyway, thus leading to our first showdown. The CG work keeps their movements above the water at slower paces than I would prefer, but the action is still intense, especially during one of the underwater shots. The Internet seems to think Kong wouldn't stand a chance against Godzilla, but I'm not so convinced. Kong is definitely stronger than small-armed Godzilla, he's more agile, and he's smarter, but of course, Godzilla proves how deadly his charge-up blue-fire laser blast can be, and his tail is a deadly secondary weapon.

After an epic opening battle, Kong and the rest of the fleet stand down, which apparently is enough to convince Godzilla they're surrendering. The humans are allowed to continue their quest to bring Kong to hollow Earth, and when they get there, it is a sight to behold. They discover an other-worldly utopia with beautiful landscapes, skies, and plant and animal life. It's in this hidden area where Kong finds what he'll need to beat Godzilla: a weapon that, when charged with this mystery energy source, can block Godzilla's fire beam and put a serious hurting on the giant reptile. Kong carries this giant axe with him to the surface and into battle once again.

Not to be outdone, the humans have their own plan. It's around this point when a big secret of the plot reveals that Apex has been working on a secret weapon: MECHA Godzilla!!! So good! Turns out Apex wants the mystery energy for themselves to power their new toy (how no one else knew about this creation seems sketch, but sure). Forget about the plausibility of these ridiculous storylines, it doesn't get much cooler than watching Mecha Godzilla's giant red laser beam plow through Godzilla's blue fire beam in downtown Hong Kong. Meanwhile King Kong makes his way back into the fracas after Godzilla temporarily knocked him down in their Round 2 bout a little while earlier (probably my favorite fight of the movie) and the final showdown commences in a 2-on-1 demolition. Again, everything feels slowed down more than I'd prefer; yes, these are gargantuan creatures, but wouldn't their movement increase proportionally? The slow-down, sometimes slow-motion factor definitely gives me the sense of their sheer weight, which offsets their slow movement speed, but I feel like the weight of their punches and throws would be felt more at full speed.

The camerawork is mostly fine during the slugfests, not getting too close for too long, and widening just enough to see the fire beams or giant final blows. The editing is done just right; shots aren't so quick that spatial awareness becomes incomprehensible, which is an underrated challenge of a movie with giant beasts crashing through cities. The music is perfectly intimidating, and the CG work is top-notch throughout. Whether Kong is dealing with flesh wounds or ripping off heads of small, winged, serpent-like creatures for a snack, everything pops with vibrant colors and dimension. This was a good reminder that big-time studios have big-time budgets and don't need to waste extra time on small, boring sets like so many of the movies made by the major streaming services lately.

There was no post-credit scene like there has been with the other movies in the series, but they definitely left it open-ended enough that we could get several more in this series. Hopefully we get more. I read that Godzilla v. Kong made $10 million, which is the most a movie has made during the pandemic. Hopefully the theatre scene returns to normal so we can see more of these amazing movies.

#Godzilla #DeadlyIllusions #KillingOfASacredDeer #MidnightSpecial