Reminiscence: Not worth remembering

Reminiscence (2021) • View trailer

One star (out of five). Rated PG-13, for violence, drug use, sexual candor and profanity

Available via: Movie theaters and HBO Max

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.27.21

Ugh.

 

Plodding, ponderous, pretentious twaddle.

 

Not even Hugh Jackman’s considerable charisma can save this one.

 

Nick (Hugh Jackman) and his colleague Watts (Thandiwe Newton) begin a memory
retrieval session with an uncooperative client, who's about to reveal something
that'll come as a nasty shock.

Actually, that’s part of the problem. Writer/director Lisa Joy obliterated Jackman’s charisma, transforming him into a mope with very little in the way of redeeming qualities.

Lineage counts for a lot; my expectations were low, knowing that Joy is one of the key show-runners who turned HBO’s update of Westworld into similarly tedious nonsense with delusions of grandeur. And — sure enough — she lives down to my worst fears with her feature film debut.

 

Reminiscence steals the futuristic Blade Runner look as the setting for an Inception-style dive into a reality constantly muddled by recaptured memories, the “twist” being that we’re often not sure which is which. That’s hardly a novel concept, nor is this clichéd premise helped by the fact that we don’t give a damn about any of these characters.

 

They’re worse than one-dimensional; they’re simply dull. 

 

Joy’s clumsy attempt to further spice this thin gruel with Raymond Chandler’s hard-edged noir sensibilities — as was done so much better in Blade Runner — is laughable.

 

Were it not for the stunning visuals crafted by production designer Howard Cummings and special effects maestro Peter Chesney, this would be a total bomb.

 

The setting is Miami, at some undetermined point in the future. The ocean has risen, due to a climate apocalypse, transforming the city into an American Venice. Water is everywhere; the lower floors of entire blocks of buildings are submerged. (Apparently this hasn’t affected anything structurally, which seems highly unlikely; Joy’s script isn’t long on real-world consequences.)

 

The chasm between the rich and everybody else has shifted onto fraught new territory: those who can afford to live on dry ground — giving an entirely new meaning to the phrase “land baron” — and everybody else. The result was some sort of war, its outcome left vague (along with everything else in Joy’s sloppy narrative).

 

Daytime temperatures are dangerously hot, prompting most people to live at night. Even allowing for this narrative element, Joy and cinematographer Paul Cameron go overboard with dark rooms, darker shadows and even darker streets; it’s sometimes difficult to determine what’s happening in a given scene. (If Cameron had dialed the illumination down a bit further, we’d have been spared having to watch the film at all.)

Joker: The monster in the deck

Joker (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for dramatic intensity, violence and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.4.19

Heath Ledger has some serious competition.

Actors have craved playing villains ever since Shakespeare’s era; as the cliché goes, it’s because they get the best lines. There’s a certain truth to that, just as the challenge of persuasively portraying madness carries its own allure.

As we initially meet him, Arthur (Joaquin Phoenix), much too socially awkward to hold a
"regular" job, makes ends meet — barely — by dressing up as a clown, and trying to
bring some joy into people's lives.

But that’s only half the equation. Unless one believes that evil emerges from the womb that way, it’s even more fascinating to depict the evolution of a monster: the downward spiral that transforms a disenfranchised — but otherwise placid — individual into a violent sociopath.

That’s where director/co-scripter Todd Phillips — sharing the writing credit with Scott Silver — truly shines. Joker is an uncomfortably disturbing portrait of an awkward misfit who’s just perceptive enough to recognize — and eventually resent — the fact that society doesn’t give a bent copper penny about him. He’s one of the “invisibles”: the exponentially expanding mass of homeless, jobless and unloved, utterly ignored by the One Percenters who don’t even glance in his direction.

If this sounds disturbingly similar to current events, that’s no accident. Phillips and Silver unerringly tap into the rising anxieties of middle-class, blue-collar and working poor individuals who have lost patience with the system, and therefore are willing to hitch their wagons to a movement or charismatic individual … even if he is a lunatic. 

Phillips and Silver exploit that angst so well, that at times Joker feels like the match about to be tossed into a dynamite-laden basement.

(Which explains Warner Bros.’ serious case of the jitters, while releasing this film in the wake of last week’s “mass shooting threat” directed at U.S. movie theaters. Recall that 2012’s Colorado slaughter took place during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises.)

Of course, Phillips and Silver’s script is merely the template; Joaquin Phoenix brings it to chilling life. His performance is an all-in depiction of mental instability: of — as initially introduced — a social outcast desperately trying to hang on to meager crumbs of civility and sanity. The film opens on cinematographer Lawrence Sher’s tight-tight-tight close-up on Phoenix, cast as hapless Arthur Fleck, who mumbles, stumbles and chain-smokes his way through an interview with a tight-lipped but sympathetic social worker (Sharon Washington, aces in a brief role).

She asks to see his journal. He reluctantly shares it. We glimpse some of the pages, and regret having done so. The message is clear: This film will be relentlessly, unapologetically uncomfortable. Fasten your seat belts; it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

The Shallows: Awash with excitement

The Shallows (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, bloody peril, brief gore and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.24.16

Solo turns are demanding even for accomplished performers, and for the obvious reason: It’s not easy to emote in a vacuum. Actors draw a lot of energy from the dynamic shared with co-stars; remove the rhythm established with such a bond, and the challenge increases exponentially.

She may be injured — bitten by a shark, stung by numerous jellyfish, battered by undersea
rocks — but Nancy (Blake Lively) is not one to surrender in despair. One way or another,
she's determined to make it back to shore ... even though she knows, intellectually, that
she can't hope to out-swim her watchful attacker.

Several examples leap to mind: Tom Hanks, in Cast Away; Robert Redford, in All Is Lost; and — for much of the film — Leonardo DiCaprio, in The Revenant. Perhaps not coincidentally, all are survival dramas.

To their company we now add Blake Lively, in The Shallows. And while I wouldn’t presume to equate her acting chops with the three individuals cited above, she nonetheless delivers a credible, persuasive portrayal of a resourceful, level-headed woman who does her best to overcome a horrific situation.

Because, yes, this is another survival drama.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra’s tidy little thriller can be summed up in three words: Woman vs. shark. But scripter Anthony Jaswinski finds increasingly clever ways to expand upon that simple premise, building suspense via the careful establishment of character and detail. Jaswinski, bless him, obviously understands the dramatic principle of Chekhov’s gun: If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off.

The Shallows is constructed very much in the style of a taut three-act play: the deceptively calm introduction; the explosion of danger, and explicit disclosure of overwhelming odds; and, finally, the struggle. Given that structure, Jaswinski deftly inserts trivial and incidental first-act details that later prove important.

I like smart scripts, and this is a smart script.

We meet Nancy Adams (Lively) as a passenger being driven to an isolated beach somewhere along the Mexican coast (actually Lord Howe Island, approximately 600 nautical miles east of Sydney, Australia). As we gradually learn, via brief flashbacks and phone calls, she’s making a cathartic pilgrimage of sorts, to the place where family lore says she was conceived.

Nancy is a skilled surfer; so was her mother, in her day. Nancy’s driver, Carlos (Óscar Jaenada), doesn’t quite believe any of this saga, but he recognizes that the trip is nonetheless important to this perky American. Their skillfully sketched conversation, lasting only a few minutes, tells us everything we need to know about Nancy. Jaswinski’s dialog is economical; the casual, spontaneous bond between Nancy and Carlos is well developed by the two actors. It feels genuine.