Netflix Recommends... Transcendence (2014)

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Director: Wally Pfister
Starring: Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany, Morgan Freeman

We can do anything now that scientists have invented magic. But, oh, this is not cause for celebration, for the future brings nothing but despair according to Transcendence, a film pitched not merely at the level of panic, but at sheer hysteria in its nightmare vision about the slippery slope of technology. Once we create a self-aware AI, there's nothing it won't be able to do! We'll have to throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater just to stop it! All that will be left is destruction, darkness, and a backwards leap into a pre-technological age. Transcendence has an interesting premise, which is perhaps to be expected from a film whose screenplay once appeared on Hollywood's famed Black List, the annual roster of the best unproduced screenplays in any given year (though given that this year's critically reviled Dirty Grandpa also once appeared on the Black List, as did such beloved classics as The Other Boleyn Girl, Wild Hogs, All About Steve, Clash of the Titans, and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, it's perhaps not the prestigious list it sells itself as being), but it doesn't do anything very interesting with it.

Review: Now You See Me (2013)

* * *Director: Louis Leterrier
Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Morgan Freeman, Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fischer, Melanie Laurent, Michael Caine

Now You See Me is a good film saddled with a bad film's ending. Right up until its finale, it is an entertaining and engaging caper movie, and then it uses the goodwill engendered by its first two thirds as leverage against the cheap trick it pulls at the end. When a film's twist ending requires the audience to completely disregard everything they've learned about a character, to ignore the way that character behaved even when he or she was alone and had no one (except the audience) to keep up appearances for, it's not clever. It's cheating. A good twist is one which not only makes sense according to the film's internal logic, but which inspires multiple viewings so that you can pick up on all the little hints and bits of foreshadowing leading to the revelation. A bad twist is one which exists solely for the shock value that comes with the first viewing and which, on subsequent viewings, just makes everything leading up to the twist seem dumb. The ending of this film is garbage; the rest of the film is pretty good... so I guess I'm recommending the first 100 minutes and warning against the last 15.