Review: The Social Reckoning

The Social Reckoning is not a movie for our times, and not just because the bulk of the action takes place between 2019 and 2021. Writer-director Aaron Sorkin's look at the Wall Street Journals' expose of various dubious practices behind the scenes at Facebook is the kind of film where the disinfectant of public exposure dispels the evils of corporate crime (All the President's Men gets mentioned at least once), which, you know, come on.

Because it's based around a giant nothingburger - part of the dramatic conclusion is the Jan 6th Capitol riots, which are shown to be A Bad Thing and yet... *gestures towards the White House* - the required dramatic heft to make this a story worth telling never really materialises. What if journalists and whistleblowers teamed up to expose real corporate crimes causing real harm to real people and nobody cared? Welcome to America.

That's not to say there's no value to be found in this sequel to 2010's The Social Network, just that much of it lies with the robotic Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong), who rarely interacts with the main thrust of the story and ends up inhabiting a more interesting film largely taking place away from our sight. Many of his scenes involve him preparing for a congressional appearance, where despite his crack team's best efforts his fundamentally alien affect keeps on shining through.

Meanwhile, data scientist Fred (an excellent Mikey Madison) can't get anyone to listen to her lengthy spiel about how Facebook has secretly pivoted to outrage, lies and hate, which makes her susceptible to a scattergun approach to gathering sources from newly installed Wall Street Journal journalist Jeff Horwitz (an unflashy Jeremy Allen White). He's in San Fransisco to work on FB from a political perspective (a joke that's meant to humanise him is that he's in no way tech savvy), and despite understanding next to nothing of what Fred's telling him, he does realise he's found a way into a very big story.

The timeline shifts back and forth, with much of the Zuckerberg stuff happening as Horwitz's big expose is on the verge of being published. Fred and Horwitz's slow burn rapport and slow dive into the belly of Facebook takes place against the backdrop of Covid (which provides the chance to show a few examples of online radicalisation seeping out into the real world), but is mostly a lot of meetings in hotel rooms where Fred shows up in various sexy outfits because she figures her cover story if she runs into anyone there is "I'm on a date".

Sorkin, it goes without saying, is no stranger to the concept of giving the audience what they want. Or what he thinks they want, which leaves large stretches of this film filled largely with his trademark banter. Here it lacks a certain energy, no matter how sexy Fred dresses; while the pace is snappy and some of the jokes land, the most memorable scenes are where Sorkin moves (slightly) out of his comfort zone, most notably the opening scene where a random roadside police stop spins deliberately out of control.

But again, the fatal flaw is that while Zuckerberg and Facebook are villains here and in real life, there's no sense of any real changes coming from all this hard work, let alone justice being served. The real world will have to come up with its own solutions; it's hard not to wish that Sorkin had followed the lead of Quentin Tarantino in Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and dumped reality for some fictional - but satisfying - cinematic catharsis.

- Anthony Morris 

 

Review: Verity

Verity starts off with one of the better meet-cutes in recent times, mostly because it involves someone seemingly exploding off screen and dousing our heroine in blood. Sadly it's not a crossover with the roof-diving zombies from the recent Resident Evil movie, and like so many of the possibilities for this movie to go completely nuts, the promise of a zombie attack gradually slips away. Or does it?

Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson) is a struggling New York author. Well, not that struggling - she's at least been published - but her book readings are sparsely attended and her agent seems more interested in sleeping with her than nurturing her career. Then she's summoned to a secret meeting where the only requirement is that she dress up. Sure hope a bike messenger doesn't get hit by a car right in front of her splashing her with blood!

Luckily a mysterious stranger (Josh Hartnett) is there to guide her into a men's room to help her wash off, lend her his shirt, and exchange some awkward deadpan dialogue (he fished his dead daughter out of a lake; her mother died last week). Then when she gets to the meeting, who should be on the other side of the boardroom desk but... a bunch of characters we've never seen before. And yes, the mysterious stranger, now wearing a new shirt.

Turns out this meeting is to offer Lowen the chance of a lifetime. Superstar author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) is no longer able to complete a series of contracted novels, and they - well, her husband Jeremy, AKA the mysterious stranger - think she's the one for the job. It's life-changing money, Jeremy is keen, there's already a bunch of notes to work from; how could she say no?

As all the notes are at Verity's messy home office in their luxury house in the middle of nowhere (Vermont), Lowen decides to stay with Jeremy and their son Crew while she gets ready to take over the series. There she discovers that after a hushed-up accident Verity is basically a vegetable, unable to walk or move or speak. What she is able to do is appear in occasional creepy flashes and freak Lowen out. But that's clearly just her imagination, right? After all, she's starting to get closer and closer to Jeremy, no wonder she's starting to feel a little guilty.

While all this is a lot, it's not really all that dramatic. Enter a mysterious manuscript with Verity's name on it that purports to be her autobiography, in which she reveals that the reason why she's so good at writing depraved monsters - supposedly her unique selling point as an author is that she writes from the villain's POV - is because (gasp) she actually is one! Could there be more to the death of Crew's twin sister a few months before the accident that turned Verity into a vegetable than meets the eye?

As a mystery, this is a film where many of the red herrings and weird moments turn out to be more interesting than what really happens, even when what really happens is pretty out there. Worse, the story (it's based on a novel by Colleen Hoover) doesn't stick the landing; it's the kind of film where you suddenly realise you've already seen the big climax, and all that's left now is a slow fizzling out.

On the plus side, Hathaway (appearing mostly in flashback) is bringing her A game as a possibly murderous sexpot, while Johnson is sadly too sharp to be playing a character this dimwitted but is still happy to go with it. Hartnett seems to be slowly turning into Charles Bronson, but he knows what's required and doesn't let the team down either. 

Verity is a collection of parts that should work - a promising set-up, the cast, a few sexy scenes, a couple of decent jokes, exactly two moments that had audience members shrieking - but it never quite comes together. There's even some interesting ideas in here: is it worse to be someone who flamboyantly and seductively promotes evil, or someone who acts good and does evil out of sight? 

The steam in this steamy thriller fades well before the end; at least you'll think twice in future about licking a spread-covered knife.

- Anthony Morris 

 

Review: Digger

Back before he became everyone's favourite entertainer, one of the many criticisms leveled at Tom Cruise was that he was always trying too hard. The irony is that while Digger is the kind of wild and crazy film that really wants you to know it's wild and crazy, Cruise is - at some points at least - the least try-hard piece of the puzzle. Even under heavy make-up, he's the one thing that makes this worth watching.

As far as the story goes, things aren't quite as straightforward as they seem. What they seem to be is a day in the life of one Digger Rockwell (Cruise), an aging oil tycoon who isn't exactly pure evil but is very much focused on pulling as much oil out of various environmentally sensitive locations as he can. He's larger than life, even if his life is largely focused at the moment on keeping a very, very elderly cat alive.

It gradually becomes clear - to us at least, as Digger is not one to let reality get in the way of his demands - that something serious is going wrong at one of his drilling platforms on the Greenland ice sheet. Things rapidly escalate; soon even Digger has to give the crisis his full attention. The US government become involved, and under the leadership of the somewhat fragile President Compson (John Goodman) things become a bit more overtly satirical even as disaster looms.

At one point there's a shift that presents things from a slightly different angle, but this move doesn't exactly sharpen the eco-satire. It distances us from it without fully defusing it; the film's best scene is a rousing rant from Digger to the European Parliament (kind of) where he goes all-in on exactly why any and all opposition to oil is pure hypocrisy, only for the film around him to spell out the real price that's being paid for that view. 

The most interesting things happening here are the minor notes, the small scenes where director Alejandro G. Inarritu shifts focus to contemplate side issues like the nature of storytelling or to deliver a strikingly surreal image. But this is a film that, even with bold swings story-wise, remains surprisingly unsure of itself, constantly swerving back to broad moments while never being fully confident about their impact.

Put another way, this is a film where on more than one occasion characters tell us how funny what we're seeing is or how amazing the performances we're watching are. You don't usually need that kind of thing if you think audiences are going to be convinced by what you're putting in front of them.

Possibly the best thing to be said about Digger is that it's going to be divisive. Even now, a pro-environmental message is controversial in some quarters, and at points this is scathing. The plot ducks and weaves in ways that are sometimes clumsy, while the satire can be scattershot. Most of the supporting cast are wasted in nothing roles.

But Cruise is always watchable and here he's given the chance to go big and go small with the same performance. He grabs it with both hands; if only the rest of the film had been as confident. Comedy might be tragedy plus time, but when it comes to the environment we ran out of time a while back.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: The Heart of the Beast

There are movies about dogs, and then there are movies about military dogs. Especially in films out of the USA, a military dog (and this includes police dogs) usually means you're going to get a story that is very much about a particular view of military (and police) service. How can you have any doubts about the bravery and honour of our brave servicepeople when one of them is a very good boy?

So while there's only the occasional glimpse in flashback of an American flag in this outdoors adventure, tonally there might as well be a faded but still visible flag filling the entire sky in every scene of this salute to the brave work done by dogs in combat in an unnamed American war in the Middle East. 

All this goes pretty much without saying in most US films about returned servicepeople. Thing is, everything that happens here could happen with Pitt's character being a regular outdoorsman with a troubled past and a dog that was injured in an accident. Grafting a "thank you for your service" angle onto these events makes it clear that it's a political choice by the filmmakers (screenwriter Cameron Alexander; director David Ayers), at a time when the American military's global rep isn't as glowing as it once was.

Oh right, the actual story: Belmont (Brad Pitt) and Odin (his dog, who has titanium teeth, an artificial leg, and PTSD from his wartime service) fly out to the Alaskan wilderness for a quiet week of fishing and drinking beer, interrupted only by some grizzled old salt (JK Simmons) who shows up for a night so we can get some dialogue.

On their flight out, there's a slightly surprising misdirect - you think they're going to crash for one reason then they crash for another reason - which means they now have to walk out to the nearest road. Climbing, stumbling, multiple animal attacks, getting dunked in a river, and Belmont repeatedly sticking parts of himself in crevasses (not always intentionally) follow.

Everybody loves watching a trek through scenic countryside, but that's pretty much all this has to offer. The survival side of things mostly simmers rather than stuns, despite a couple of set-pieces that do provide some drama. It's a strength that Pitt's character is competent; when things go wrong, it's not because he made a mistake. It's just tough out there. 

Aside from knowing how to make a spear (and his military service), there's not enough to Belmont as scripted to forge any real connection with an audience; it's left up to Pitt's natural charm to do all the heavy lifting, and while he does a solid job he falters whenever he's asked to bring his emotions to the surface.

Likewise, Odin (played by four different dogs in the movie) is an asset rather than a liability, but aside from his PTSD he rarely gets the opportunity to develop any kind of character beyond being, you know, a dog. It's a film where the characters are loosely sketched in, and this needed to be a lot more dramatic and suspenseful to make that approach work.

The Heart of the Beast is a film that assumes you're already keenly interested in both dogs and wilderness. Which is a reasonable assumption, even if that means it only does the bare minimum to make either of those things interesting. Just don't ask why the US military uses dogs in a war zone.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: The Weight

At times The Weight is basically The Wages of Fear only on two legs, and that is in no way a bad thing. A classic of suspense film-making that's been remade a number of times - including the 70s classic Sorcerer and a recent French remake that was less than perfect - it's become the benchmark for a certain kind of white-knuckle tension. And while The Weight is a little smaller in scale, the tension hasn't shrunk a bit.

It's the 1930s, and single dad Samuel Murphy (Ethan Hawke) is, like much of the United States, struggling. He's a loving father who's doing his level best, but when an attempt to find somewhere to live goes awry he's sentenced to hard labour at a camp run by the baseball-loving J.J. Clancy (Russell Crowe).

Things seem set for a run of prison brutality, but when Murphy shows his technical skills off by removing a massive boulder (thus freeing up the inmates to play ball on Sunday), Clancy gets friendly. Turns out Murphy is working to a deadline - there's only a month or so before his daughter goes into permanent care, and even with a day's hard labour taking two off his sentence he won't get out in time. Impressed by his skills, Clancy makes him an offer he can't refuse.

Together with three men he can trust (which ends up being two men and a loud mouth), Murphy's sent over to a nearby gold mine. FDR is about to nationalise the nation's gold reserves, and a bunch of mines have already been robbed to get ahead of the compulsory acquisitions. To keep this load of gold in private hands, Murphy and his crew (accompanied by two guards) are going to carry it overland on a week-long trek through a wild forest to a pick up point. 

If all the gold arrives safely, Murphy will sign their release papers. If even one bar goes missing, they get paid in lead. Which means they can't afford to lose any. Which means that when things start to get tricky - as they almost immediately do - they're stuck carrying the gold through rivers, over ravines, while fleeing from bandits, and through whatever other obstacles get thrown in their way. Not that anyone believes they'll be left to tell their story even if they do succeed.

The supporting cast are broadly sketched but that's enough to do the job. Even Crowe is only around for a handful of scenes; this is Hawke's film, and he's matured into the kind of compelling presence that can hold a scene together just by watching what everyone else is up to.

This isn't exactly an action film, though there are a number of action scenes, and even a shootout or two - think something closer to a 70s-ro-80s tough guy drama. The storytelling from director Padraic McKinley is firmly grounded in the physical, all struggling men and muddy ground, and the forest setting is both beautiful and ominous. 

They're on enemy turf the whole way, whether the threat is a rickety rope bridge that will carry a person or a sake of gold but not both, or a seemingly friendly prospector who might have a few friends hiding in the darkness.

There isn't a lot of subtext to this, but there doesn't need to be: the basic set-up is more than gripping enough to make this work. The Weight is a smart, polished, edge-of-your-seat thriller that builds the tension until you can't take your eyes off the screen; it may not be a blockbuster, but this kind of film is worth its weight in gold.

- Anthony Morris 

 

Review: Coyote vs Acme

Notorious for being one of a handful of films originally buried by Warner Brothers for tax reasons (if nobody ever saw it, they could write off all the costs), Coyote vs Acme became an internet cause despite being seen by next to no-one. Propelled by hype unrelated to comedy, it eventually made its way to cinemas, where finally audiences can judge for themselves. Is this a modern day classic, or did it deserve its original, ignoble fate?

If you're a fan of the original Looney Tunes, this is a bit of a mixed bag. The basic premise - the Coyote, having figured out that the one element that links all his failures to catch the Roadrunner is the faulty products he's been buying from Acme, decides to sue - isn't really enough to build an entire movie on, and every new element added takes us one step further away from the elegant simplicity that made the original cartoons so memorable.

But a feature-length Roadrunner movie (even one based on a New Yorker short story) was always going to have to throw a few more items into the pot, and for the most part this chooses wisely. As the Coyote's bottom-feeding lawyer (more due to being crushed by the world than by choice) Kevin Avery, Will Forte manages to make a constantly exasperated and defeated character likable, while John Cena as his courtroom rival - he's defending Acme, which is headed by a blustering big business bird in the shape of Foghorn Leghorn - does what he can with a supporting role.

The legal drama itself has some twists and turns, including one very funny reveal that goes a long way towards redeeming the whole idea of a Looney Tunes courtroom drama, while the sinister conspiracy that's gradually uncovered works mostly as an excuse to bring in a whole bunch of other Looney Tunes characters. Which again, is a good thing, and the cameos are both smart and amusing.

If this overall isn't quite as funny as the recent The Day the Earth Blew Up, that's because the live-action side of things here - while smoothly integrated with the animation - tends to impose a limit or two on the wackiness, while the doors it opens for comedy mostly lead to comparisons to Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

It does also require the story to have some kind of emotional climax, which... look, it's the Roadrunner and Coyote. Do we need any kind of heartfelt connection between these two eternal foes? For this movie to work, yes we do. For the characters as we've known and loved them via the classic Chuck Jones animated shorts? Not so much.

The result is a highly entertaining and often very funny movie that will possibly leave long-time fans of the characters scratching their heads a little. You could argue that's what it should do: times have changed, and this is aimed at a new audience.  If we stop moving forward, we're likely to look down and see there's nothing beneath us but a very long drop.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: Resident Evil

There's something to be said for an action hero who finds himself in over his head. When we first meet Bryan (Austin Abrams), he's a semi-competent medical courier with a possibly pregnant girlfriend on the phone and a missing signature on a deliver form. Trying to find someone to sign it keeps him around the snowed-in hospital just long enough to be offered a job delivering a mystery package to Racoon City. Who can say no to overtime pay?

Everybody watching this knows that a trip to Racoon City is a one-way ticket to mutant zombie hell; even if you've never played the (very successful) games, you've probably seen one of the numerous (slightly less successful) films based on those games, many of which starred Milla Jovovich. The fun thing about this very fun movie is that director and co-writer Zach Cregger  (Weapons) knows what his audience is anticipating. Does he deliver? He does - just not in the way you might expect.

Slipping and sliding on the icy roads in the middle of the night, Bryan hits a woman who walks right out in front of him. We know what that means: zombie time! Bryan, on the other hand, does not know it's probably not the best idea to go after her and see if she's okay. This will not be the last bad decision he makes this night.

What follows is a slow build up to a wild ride that revels in horror cliches and video game mechanics when its not busy subverting them. Memorable images, startling moments, nail-biting sequences, and big moments that mange to be both ridiculous and terrifying; this has it all.

It doesn't forget the franchise's video game roots either. Bryan constantly levels up the weapons he has, while inventory management is also surprisingly important. That said, he's not a great shot, doesn't really know how guns work and experience doesn't help him get any better. Also, padlocks; they're all over the place.

Being a bit of a doofus makes Bryan both charming (kind of) and relatable, even as he goes from being freaked out by what he's facing to showing some decent puzzle-solving skills in the face of mutated hordes of ravenous killers. Especially as almost everyone else he meets - and he spends a lot of time on his own here - is even less competent. Not that being competent helps matters, as a couple of short-lived characters make very clear.

Nobody is safe from the horror that is unfolding, but at least there's a bunch of good laughs along the way. The comedy here ranges from the extremely dark to, well, there's an electric fence gag you'll see coming from a mile away. It's also got plenty of jump scares and some fairly inventive monster designs, plus a lot of gore that's more unsettling (or darkly funny) than disgusting. And Bryan's relentless drive forward means he keeps on pushing himself into and through some pretty rough situations; in a city full of cannibal zombies, choosing to drop down into the sewers requires a very specific mindset.

At a tight 90 minutes and with a plot that runs on rails - he's got to deliver a package, no more no less - this doesn't mess around. Bryan finds himself in a bad situation, and by the time he realises how bad it is, it's gotten worse; a living nightmare for some, a fun night at the movies for others.

- Anthony Morris