Summer movie round-up: Miss Sloane rocks, Shyamalan's tricks are getting (wait for it) Old

I finally had time to pound out some reviews of several movies I've seen in the last couple of months. Check them out below. Warning: major spoilers ahead for pretty much all of them! Two of them are bigger 2021 releases, and the rest are a bit older, but they were all new to me.

Old (Theatres - 2021): 7.0

Watching The Sixth Sense for the first time is still one of the most memorable movie-watching experiences of my life. The twist was so brilliantly hidden in plain sight, yet right there to figure out. The style of the movie and the story itself were fine, and the acting was great, but everyone remembers that movie for the great twist that M. Night Shyamalan pulled off.

That movie came out in 1999. Fast forward 22 years later, and I feel like Shyamalan has turned into a one-trick pony, yet people seem fine with him trying his trick over and over.

That might seem like an unfair label if not for the litany of movies with the same old formula - Signs, The Village, Lady in The Water, The Happening and even his show Wayward Pines - that prove otherwise. Going into his latest movie, titled Old, I fully knew what to expect, and that completely lowered my ceiling for how much I could enjoy this movie. Is it fair that I judge one of his movies based on how his other movies played out? Probably not, but the flip side of that coin is he has made a bigger name for himself (and a lot of money) for playing off that formula; he invites people to criticize him for being so formulaic. And I wouldn't even have a big problem with that if the formula was great and still worked. Franchises like the MCU, Fast and Furious, James Bond, and many others spit out a lot of the same old stuff, but they get away with it primarily because they are all highly rewatchable and highly entertaining.

I need to establish that context because writing about Old is really tricky; it could've been the best movie he's made since The Sixth Sense outside of the Unbreakable series (those are just different enough that I don't lump them in with the rest). But even Shyamalan made it hard to take his own movie seriously. The story in Old centers around some vacationing people trapped on a mysterious island shoreline. But a few times during the movie, the characters spot someone watching them from afar (an unnamed character played by none other than Shyamalan, of course). What a trolling move! It's as if Shyamalan is telling the crowd he knows we're expecting some grandiose story reveal. It was such a cheesy, clunky mechanic that basically took all the suspense out of the movie. The audience was treated childishly, as if he's saying to us "Don't worry, this will all make sense at the end. I'll explain everything." Seriously, we absolutely don't need his help seeing through the transparency of his cliched writing. Oh sure, I bet some people think it's something funny he's doing in jest, but that would feel just as disrespectful of the audience and their time. We already are coming into the movie expecting some gimmicky twist at the end because that's how all his movies go. He doesn't need to telegraph it from miles away (and quite literally, too! The guy watching the characters with the camera was a few miles away on top of a cliff watching them on the shoreline).

Like I said, it's a bummer he didn't tell the story with a sense of purity and integrity because Shyamalan actually gave the audience something to chew on with a decent proposition after the reveal. A long time ago, people discovered that a random spot on this island's beach caused people to age incredibly fast. A team of medical scientists found a way to make this glitchy situation useful. They bring along "patients" with various issues, then drug them right before taking them out to the shore. Basically they are test subjects for these medical scientists, who now have a way to research how to treat various diseases at an incredibly fast rate. But is it worth it? The idea is they were risking the lives of a handful of people to accelerate medical development to the point that the advancements to be discovered and save far more lives long-term would far outpace the sacrifices of a few. We find out that the characters we followed throughout the movie were a part of Trial 73, implying they already have tested on that many groups of "patients."

The end scenes aren't very thorough, but they don't need to be. The final act gives the audience just the right amount of information to make them want more, which kind of proves how successful Shyamalan's thought experiment was. Of course, the operation gets shut down because it is deemed immoral, but I wonder what would've happened if the organization was transparent about their intentions from the outset. Would people willingly volunteer for something like that? Probably not, but the concept was presented quite well enough for me to chew on the idea; in that sense, Shyamalan's story was really compelling. And if not for Shyamalan's transparent approach, the rest of the movie would have felt intriguing enough that Old could've gone down as one of his absolute best. Instead, I left with middling feelings about the decisions and execution of the story that risked making this movie mostly forgettable.

Miss Sloane (Amazon Prime - 2016): 8.0

What a find for me. I've had this one on my watchlist for a long time, but finally got around to it recently. Jessica Chastain is an incredible actress, even in a type of movie that typically doesn't demand a ton of acting chops. This political thriller smartly didn't take too strong of a stance in either camp presented in the movie, but instead kept the focus on how lobbyists, the media, and all sorts of political figures and general intrigue can affect votes and the public's views. Chastain gets the chance of a lifetime when she's presented an opportunity to put up a fight against the seemingly unbeatable NRA. How far she's willing to go does get pretty Hollywood - especially when she's got secret high-tech labs and a mechanical bug at her disposal; it felt very much like spy movies from a bygone era, but I loved it for that.

These sort of movies often forgo enough development of the characters to make any convictions or lessons learned actually come across as genuine and realistic. That is not the case here, which is all the more impressive when you consider how morally bankrupt Sloane is; she hires a male prostitute when she needs a release for crying out loud. Sloane starts out as a typical highly motivated one-woman-army who has no time for a personal life while trying to run from things in her past, and she is willing to run over anyone as a means to her end. But as Sloane exposes some incredible secrets from one or two of the key side characters, we see her approach the situation with regret as she works to make things right.

There are a couple of softly delivered stances (as opposed to blatant political agendas that are too pervasive in movies today) as Sloane presents some thought processes on sexism and other hot-button issues with grace and intelligence, something we hardly see in the real world (neither from real politicians or 99 percent of people on social media who usually do more harm than good when they open their big mouths).

The final scene pushes her character arc over the top with a few surprises and deserves to be far more memorable than it probably will be. In addition to a great story twist, it had an emotional play that really rounded out the entire story nicely.

Transcendence (Amazon/Hulu - 2014): 8.0

For the most part, Transcendence was little more than a concept movie. Even within the sci-fi genre, the idea of uploading a consciousness to a computer to create a digital representation is not new by any means. But the tenderness and mystique surrounding the A.I.'s intentions are what truly separate this movie from the rest of the pack. It leaves you with a totally different feeling than the typical doom-and-gloom, kill-or-be-kill, man-versus-robot combative nature that is all but inevitable in movies with this type of story.

After the opening couple of scenes, I pretty much set my expectations for how the rest of the movie would play out. A group of scientists, led by a man named Will (Johnny Depp) and his wife Evelyn (played by the criminally underrated Rebecca Hall), prepare the world for major scientific and medical breakthroughs only for the anti-technology contingent to muck things up with an assassination attempt on Will, and it seemed like we were off to the races. They seemed successful, but Evelyn was able to upload Will's mind to a super computer to preserve him as much as possible.

From there, I had to throw my expectations out the window. We watch the A.I.'s progression unfold, and we're left screaming at the scientists, "Don't do it! The computer will grow smart and take over the world! Haven't you seen I, Robot. Age of Ultron, or Terminator?" But don't let your predispositions fool you. This computer certainly does some questionable things, but it also surprises with its implementation of cutting-edge technology.

It felt very much like Iron Man 3 (also starring Hall, by the way). The A.I. version of Will figures out how to create rapid regeneration (think Wolverine's healing powers) using nanotechnology. The nanotech also is used to restore nature to a flourishing, non-decaying state. The A.I. is out to do good, but because of some misunderstandings from humans, it is not easily accepted.

A lack of action does lend itself to a slower-paced, less-thrilling movie, but the concept itself was gratifying in a whole other way.

Reservation Road (HBO Max - 2007): 6.0

Watching two outstanding actors play off each other definitely elevated an otherwise average movie titled Reservation Road. Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Ruffalo both play fathers, but Joaquin's character, Ethan, loses his young son after a reckless driver, Dwight (Ruffalo), hits the kid, then flees the scene. Ethan and his wife Grace (played well by Jennifer Connelly) go through the stages of grief any parent would after a tragedy like that. But Ethan also wants to find the guy who killed their son. So he works with the police and hires a lawyer.

That lawyer happens to be Dwight.

It's a pretty great twist that creates tension the rest of the movie. It reminded me of the twist in Spider-Man: Homecoming when Peter realizes his girlfriend's dad is also the Vulture when he's picking her up for the prom. Here, Dwight is trying to help Ethan find himself! Dwight has to do his job well enough that no one would suspect he's trying to hide anything, but he, of course, doesn't actually want his investigation to lead them anywhere. It's a fun premise, but eventually it overstays its welcome. The rest of the movie is just okay. Dialogue seems pretty weak at times, especially during conversations between Dwight and his son.

A completely unrelated note: the movie came out in 2007 and take place a couple of years before that, around the time when the Red Sox won their first World Series in decades. I loved that era of baseball; anyone who beat the Yankees became a favorite team of mine, and that Red Sox team was incredibly fun to watch.

Population 436 (Amazon; also Netflix - 2006): 6.0

This movie seemed pretty low-budget, and it has a simple gimmick (I'd avoid trailers to at least extend the effectiveness of the gimmick a little bit), but somehow it kept me intrigued. The story easily could've been written by Stephen King, and the flow of the movie felt like most movies based on his works.

Its premise has been done to death - a small town (...cough...cult!) goes to great lengths to protect a secret about their town's population - but the strange events and behavior of the characters maintain an alluring nature. The ending is going to make or break the movie for most people, and I could easily see why some people would hate it (it's very depressing, for one).

Vanished (Netflix - 2020): 6.0

I'll admit I didn't see the final twist of the movie Vanished coming whatsoever, but honestly, having so many different focuses throughout the movie proved to be more of a detriment to the twist than a misdirect.

The story revolves around Paul and Wendy, a married couple who clearly are working through issues. They escape to a sparsely occupied lake campground in their RV with their daughter and their family dog.

Not long into their trip, their daughter goes missing.

It progresses pretty predictably. The two guys running the campground are incredible weird and creepy, naturally becoming suspects in the audience's mind. The police launch a huge search led by a detective who claims to never have failed finding a lost child, but of course, he's lying about that because he actually lost one child - his own son, which gives him personal motivation. Meanwhile, Miranda and Eric, a younger married couple, happens to be camped right next to Paul and Wendy. Miranda was sending a couple of inappropriate signals to Paul, which creates ill-timed (and unfulfilling) drama between the two couples. To make matter worse, they all decide to work together and help with the search by taking a small motor boat out on the lake. Yeah, not all four of them return, but there's so little investment in the other couple that it's hard to feel sorry for them.

The most aggravating twist comes at the discovery of a child pornography ring the owner of the campground was secretly running (he used a poorly hidden secret room underneath his store). But not only did this story not tie in well enough to any of the other stories, but it also felt like it was an idea shoved in at the last second; nothing about the movie would really change if this element was different or removed altogether.

The twist at the end somehow still manages to pull a fast one on the audience and make us realize there were enough pieces to put it together before the reveal. Even so, all the other threads the movie's writers started pulling on might have been far more interesting despite only serving as distractions to the real story.

Reminiscence (HBO Max - 2021): 4.0

What a bummer. This movie has some incredible visuals, a cool gimmick, and some great actors to pull the audience into this unique fantasy world. Yet all we're left with is a completely convoluted and uninteresting story involving a woman's journey that causes disaster wherever she goes, and a man who gets too caught up in the chase of it all.

This man, Nick (played by Hugh Jackman), has a machine that allows him to dive into people's memories. A woman named Mae is his latest client, and he falls for her. But she disappears, so he thinks reliving her memories will provide clues to track her down. What ends up happening is he stumbles onto other, deeper plots that muddy up what he remembers about her; apparently she got mixed up with the wrong crowds. He tries desperately to find out if she truly loved him or if she more or less used him. The answer he gets is satisfying and sad at the same time.

To recap: the story is a giant mess.

The bigger waste in the movie was with the world building, or lack thereof. The whole world somehow has been flooded, and life looks very different. We get a tiny snippet of how the world would operate with major cities covered in a foot of water. But this leaves me begging to know more, and not in the less-is-more kind of way, but more in the what-the-heck-is-going-on sort of way. The worst part is the state of the world had virtually no real consequences on the story or characters, and least not any satisfactory ones. What a shame, because better execution would've made this idea way cooler.

Synchronic (Netflix -2019): N/A

Literally one of the worst movies I've seen. I won't score it because I couldn't even get through it. I don't care what the ending was, either. It wouldn't have been worth the suffering to get to that point.

#Old #MissSloane #Reminiscence #Vanished #Population436 #ReservationRoad #Transcendence