10 Cloverfield Lane

10 Cloverfield Lane doesn’t really resemble the movie it is supposedly related to.  2008’s Cloverfield had two notable things about it: first, it was filmed in complete secrecy. When the first trailers started appearing, even few industry insiders knew it was coming. The other thing was how the movie was shot. The entire thing is handheld found footage. The premise is that a Godzilla-like monster attacks New York and a group of 20 somethings films the whole thing. Lots of bouncing, lens-flare filled footage of a monster as it passes between buildings six blocks away. It was a clever trick but just that – a trick. This approach was gimmicky, and distracted from than served the story. Cloverfield was a financial success, more than quintupling its 25 million dollar budget.

 

But 10 Cloverfield Lane doesn’t resemble its cinematic ancestor and doesn’t even appear to take place in the same version of reality. What it does resemble is an episode of the great, early 60s tv show, The Twilight Zone. At the height of the Cold War and racial tensions in America, writer and producer Rod Serling found that he couldn’t tell stories that dealt directly with the problems facing our country because censors and network forces kept watering down his work. So rather than fight for more literalism, Serling went the opposite direction and decided to tell his stories using science fiction and fantasy to veil his ideas. Racism, McCarthyism, gender stereotypes, and other touchy subjects were broached on prime time television through the use of things like aliens, flying saucers, and ironic trick endings. Serling correctly deduced that if real issues are addressed in fantastic ways, viewers were less likely to write angry letters and more likely to stand around the water cooler the next day and talk about what they saw.

 

So, 10 Cloverfield Lane is the story of Michelle, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, a young woman in the process of tearfully driving away from a relationship that’s just ended when she almost immediately gets into a horrendous car accident. When she wakes up, she finds herself in a grimy cinderblock room where her wounds have been tended to with outdated medical equipment. Oh, and she’s chained to the wall. Michelle discovers that she is in an underground bunker built by a man named Howard, played by John Goodman. Howard says he saw her accident and brought her to his bunker because while she was unconscious, there was an attack on the surface. He’s not sure if it was nuclear or chemical or if, as he says, “The Martians finally figured out how to get to earth.” So by bringing her to his bunker, he has actually saved her life twice. Of course, Michelle thinks Howard is a nutjob and that he’s abducted her. Complicating issues is the presence of Emmett, played by John Gallagher Jr. He’s a local who helped Howard build the shelter. He says he saw the attacks begin and came to the bunker for shelter. So what’s real? Who is telling the truth? Is Howard a captor or a savior? Could Michelle escape and if so, what is there to escape to?

The film is like The Twilight Zone in that it uses a sci fi premise to explore our present day anxieties. 10 Cloverfield Lane addresses very big end-of-the-world stuff like the possibility of chemical terrorist attacks in the U.S. right along with the very intimate fear of strangers and abduction in an increasingly dangerous world.

Also like a Twilight Zone episode, it has a surprise ending that I won’t give away here.

The story is lean and compact, and the performances are great. Mary Elizabeth Winstead convincingly plays Michelle as smart, resourceful, and terrified. John Goodman is criminally underappreciated and should be recognized for the fascinating performance he gives. The film relies on good writing, strong performances, and smart direction. See it. If you dare.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny

The last movie I reviewed that was produced by Netflix to appear both on the streaming service and in some select theaters was Adam Sandler’s egregious Western waste of time, The Ridiculous Six. I hated that movie like I hate racism, cancer, and Elvis impersonators, so pretty much anything else Netflix could produce will be an improvement. Fortunately for everyone, their second big screen production, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny, actually is better. Unfortunately for everyone, this sequel isn’t nearly as good as the original. 

 

It’s the sequel to Ang Lee’s 2000 film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Lee had made a name for himself in Hollywood directing elegant literary adaptations and intense dramas, and so directing a traditional Chinese wuxia film, a martial arts movie that focuses on chivalry, seemed out of left field. But Lee’s lyricism and elegance combined with some world class action choreography made for an unusually potent and successful film. It did great box office and won several awards, including the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

Sword of Destiny takes place 18 years after the first film, and begins with Yu Shu Lien being attacked on the road as she journeys back to Peking for the first time since the love of her life, Li Mu Bai, died. She handily dispatches a few dozen attackers and figures out that the evil warlord, Hades Dai, is trying to claim the fabled sword, The Green Destiny, so he can be the mightiest warrior in the kingdom and unite all the different territories into one empire under his rule. 

 The good guys try to protect the sword, the bad guys try to get the sword, and a couple of ambiguous characters keep the audience guessing about their intentions. As in the first film, there’s star crossed love, lots of talk about honor and code, and artful, playful, sometimes dazzling and gravity defying martial arts combat chorography. Michelle Yeoh reprises her role as the dignified and powerful Shu Lien and neither the character nor the actor appear to have lost a step in the years since the first film.

New cast members bring a lot of charm and some comic relief. A small band of warriors who are followers of the Iron Way come to defend the Green Destiny, each with a fantastic wuxia name like Silent Wolf, Flying Blade, and Thunder Fist Chan.

While the film is certainly fun and an enjoyable way to spend a hundred and three minutes, it pales in comparison to the first film. Ang Lee’s direction and Chow Yun Fat’s performance and interaction with Michelle Yeoh gave the original Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon both a lyrical, poetic beauty and an emotional weight. The film felt epic and dream-like. The duel in the bamboo forest for possession of the Green Destiny is as lovely and exciting a sequence as I’ve seen in film. As well choreographed and nicely shot as Sword of Destiny is, there’s nothing in it that carries the same power

The film was directed by Yuen Woo-Ping, an accomplished and successful director and fight choreographer in Hong Kong cinema. He does a fine job here and the action sequences look great. But like most sequels, Sword of Destiny fails to deliver the power and resonance of the first film. Despite recurring characters and a very similar plot to the original, Sword of Destiny lacks its distinction. This could almost be any wuxia film. There’s a generic, computer generated feel to it at times that fails to create any real friction or texture between the characters or in the images on the screen.

Still, if you like martial arts action films, you could definitely do worse than this one.

And if nothing else, it’s way, way better than The Ridiculous Six.

Risen

Bible stories have been on the silver screen for as long as there has been a silver screen. Some of the very earliest silent films in the teens and twenties were passion plays and other stories from the new and old testaments. The genre hit its zenith in the 1950s with big screen epics like The Ten Commandments, The Robe, and Ben-Hur. One of the most profitable films in history was Mel Gibson’s 2004 film The Passion of the Christ which made over 600 million dollars on a 30 million dollar budget and showed that even in our more secular times, there’s still a huge audience for filmed adaptations of Biblical stories. More recently, even the Coen brothers have gotten into the act with Hail Caesar, a movie about making a movie about a Roman soldier who becomes converted at Christ’s crucifixion. 

 The most recent entry in the genre is Kevin Reynolds’ Risen starring Joseph Fiennes.  Fiennes plays Clavius, a respected Roman soldier assigned to Jerusalem and whose job it is to keep the peace in that obscure yet turbulent part of the empire. Early on in the film, he’s called on to supervise a few crucifixions, including that of a rabble rousing rebel named Yeshua. Clavius looks into the man’s eyes, sees that he is dead, and then moves on with his day. 

 The problems really begin, of course, when Yeshua’s body disappears from a sealed and guarded tomb and all the local leaders are upset because clearly the man’s followers stole the body in order to promote the ridiculous and blasphemous stories Yeshua told about himself and to further the civil and religious unrest in the area. Clavius is assigned by Pilate to track down the body and put an end to the crazy cultists who would do a thing like that.

So the film becomes a really low-tech Bible-based episode of Law and Order, with the seen-it-all solider trying to solve a grisly whodunit. He interrogates witnesses, he exhumes bodies, and we are constantly reminded that in the heat of ancient Jerusalem, he only has a couple of days before the body is completely unrecognizable.

A very bulked up Joseph Fiennes plays Clavius with a laconic world-weariness that borders on sleepwalking. We get that he’s supposed to be a good man who is sometimes worn down by the violent acts he has to commit in the name of duty, but for the first half of the film, he looks like he can barely keep his eyes open. His squinty cynicism comes across as either boredom or sleep deprivation.

 Much more interesting is Cliff Curtis’s portrayal of Yeshua or Jesus. You will probably recognize Curtis. He’s a prolific character actor, a New Zealander of Maori descent and has been called upon to play an impressive array of ethnicities in his career. In Risen, Curtis’s version of Jesus is a far cry from the pale, pasty, somnambulant Christs of most big budget adaptations. He plays Jesus as playful and winking – almost jolly. It’s clear he and the filmmakers were striving for a warm, approachable Jesus and not some lofty, untouchable super being.

Speaking of the filmmakers, Risen was directed by Kevin Reynolds who has two claims to fame. Number one, he directed the very successful 1991 Kevin Costner film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and number two, he directed the spectacularly unsuccessful 1995 Kevin Costner film Waterworld, a movie that is synonymous with excess and failure.  Appropriately enough, Reynolds finds some redemption in Risen. He directs the film with a low-to-the-ground workman-like style that’s not fancy, but it gets the job done.

There’s nothing controversial or doctrinally challenging about Risen. It’s a traditional Easter story told from a slightly different point of view. You could take your mom or your older kids and have a nice, uplifting time. If you don’t like it, don’t worry. There will always be more Bible stories at the movies.