Safety not guaranteed

Here's a plot recap and pretty fair review.  I actually enjoyed this film quite a bit.  It's definitely slight and breezy, but it nicely balances the sci-fi elements with a light romance in a way that a bigger film most likely wouldn't have been able to.  Its not perfect. The B plot in particular is a little too on the nose, there are a few plot mechanics that don't quite make sense, and one really jarring cameo towards the end.  Those are just minor quibbles though, and overall it has a light sensibility that I found appealing.  I also have to give some props to Aubrey Plaza.  This easily could have just been more of her character from Parks and Recreation (which I love), but she manages to move beyond deadpan snarkiness and find some depth in the role.  I will now end any attempt a serious commentary.  I apologize for the detour.

So yeah, check it out.  

Prometheus

Prometheus is the quintessential 6/10 film.  It has a few interesting ideas, looks nice, is reasonably well-acted, and I don't have any real interest in ever watching it again.  Here's the plot recap if you're interested.  Anyway, considering Ridley Scott's recent work (Robin Hood, American Gangster, Body of Lies, etc.) being solidly watchable is a huge step in the right direction.  I've never been much of an Alien guy (I've seen the first two films once) and if I was maybe I'd be more excited by this, but I do appreciate that it tries to introduce a little more intelligence than than the typical sc-fi offering (even if the execution is mixed).

Anyway there are a couple of holes in the film that I just have to mention (obviously spoilers ahead):

- All of a sudden the captain (played by Stringer Bell with a Texas accent) suddenly realizes the Alien building they've been hanging out in is a military installation with weapons of mass destruction - but he had no evidence to base this on.  Seriously its really out of the blue and unprompted.  Its almost as if a scene was cut.

- The android's head gets ripped off and laid down on the floor of a ship next to his body.  After the ship is blown out of the sky, and then rolls about two miles, his head hasn't moved at all and is still right next to the body.  This really bothered me.

-Two crewman are trapped outside the ship at night.  They also record everything that happens to them. They are then horrifically killed by Alien snakes.  This is all on tape (nobody is watching the monitor's when it happens though because Stringer Bell is off getting busy with Charlize Theron).  The next morning when the crew members don't check in, rather than watching the tapes everybody just decides  to suit up and go looking for them.  This obviously does not go well.

- The main character knocks out two medical personnel, runs around the ship in a drug induced haze, and then performs an emergency C section on herself to remove an Alien baby.  She then wanders around some more to get dressed.  No one notices (and this is a small ship). This will be important later when the Alien baby becomes a giant squid.

So yeah, there's that.

The Dictator

I had an odd reaction to this film.  I actually laughed quite a bit, but I'd hesitate to call it a good film.  Its all over the place, and really feels more like a series of sketches than a coherent whole.  Its full of the cheerful offensiveness that most of  Sascha Baron Cohen's films have, but a lot of the crassness just comes off as forced rather than funny.  The film is most successful in the more improvised moments where the actors appear to be just be riffing (unsurprising given Baron Cohen's background).   But on the whole its way too broad to be a successful satire. A lot of it falls flat, but it had enough moments that I can't completely write it off.

And I enjoyed this:

"What's wrong with Crocs?"
"They're the universal symbol of a man who's given up hope.  You might as well start wearing sweatpants and eating at Applebees everyday."

Moonrise Kingdom

I've said it before, but I'm all in on Wes Anderson.  And Moonrise Kingdom is incredibly Wes Andersony.  So by deductive logic I really enjoyed the film.  I get that his style could come off as incredibly pretentious. But for some reason I feel like he's able to keep the balance on the right side of whimsical, without drowning in style.  Given how all-encompassing the style is that's quite an achievement.

All that said, and Will Leitch made this point in his review, it would be interesting to see what would happen if Anderson tried a completely different kind of film.  Maybe a franchise (the hunger games?), a superhero film, or a teen comedy.  It would just be interesting to see how his sensibility would translate to a genre outside his comfort zone. It may not work at all, but I'd like to see him try.  On the other hand if he just decides to keep pumping out these breezy, mannered, colorful films I'd be fine with that too.

Men In Black III

The overwhelming critical consensus has been 'Wow, its not as bad as we thought it would be.'  Given that all I remember about MIB II is that it ended with some sort of cat necklace, I can't say that showing slight improvement with the sequel is all that impressive.    Anyway I agree that its not horrible but really, and this is a point that's been made elsewhere, its just overwhelmingly unnecessary.  Everybody involved goes through all the machinations in a professional manner, but it just comes off as so perfunctory that I never really got engaged.  Really I was almost bored.  I could go into more detail, but why bother.  Its fairly watchable, instantly forgettable, and hopefully won't do well enough to generate another iteration of the series.  

Headhunters

Here's the plot recap.  I usually have slightly higher expectations for foreign films since the fact that they even get shown in the U.S. should be a signal of good quality.  Usually to make it over here a sub-titled film has to be exceedingly popular, or critically acclaimed.  Basically we won't get the Norwegian equivalent of What to Expect when you're expecting.   Headhunters isn't bad, but its not great either.  Regular readers (all one of you) will know one of my biggest annoyances is tonal inconsistency, which is something this film has real issues with.  It veers between dark comedy, slapstick humor, strong violence, and personal redemption without a real coherence to the shifts.  You can tell it really wants to be Fargo (and given that the lead actor looks like an albino Steve Buscemi I guess that's appropriate), but it doesn't have the guts to stick with the darkness of its premise.  Had they really committed to the fact that the main character is pretty much a petty jerk, and didn't try to end with an un-earned redemption, I think it would have been a more successful.  Its still watchable, and well-acted, but I never really cared about what was going to happen to the protagonist.  Yes bad stuff keeps happening to him, but it didn't really bother me.

Its still worth seeing as a reasonably well-executed caper, and provides some nice scandanavian scenery.  I'm just afraid the plot and resolution don't end up justifying all the machinations the film goes through.