Netflix Recommends... Transcendence (2014)

* *
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.

Netflix Recommends... Please Give (2010)

* * * 1/2
Director: Nicole Holofcener
Starring: Catherine Keener, Rebecca Hall, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt

Netflix's top recommendations for me are getting better, although they still feel a bit random. This time my choices included Alpha Dog, Battle: Los Angeles, Omar Killed Me, The Lookout, Hoffa, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, Jack Reacher and Please Give. Having recently enjoyed Nicole Holofcener's Enough Said, and having been meaning to check out Please Give for some time now, that ended up being my selection and it turned out to be a pretty good one. Alternately darkly funny and heartbreakingly sad, Holofcener's meditation on death and guilt is a sharp and incisive character study - even if those characters aren't always people you might want to study.

Review: The Town (2010)

* * *
Director: Ben Affleck
Starring: Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jeremy Renner, Jon Hamm

The Ben Affleck career renaissance continues and gathers steam with The Town, his directorial follow-up to Gone, Baby, Gone. Like its predecessor, it is a gritty, Boston-set thriller, though I don't know that it has quite the same emotional impact. Still, it's a competently made and executed genre picture and worth a look.

The film is set in the neighborhood of Charlestown, which we are told is home to a high concentration of bank robbers, and opens with a bank robbery. Doug (Affleck), Jem (Jeremy Renner), Desmond (Owen Burke), and Gloansy (Slaine) - the team behind the heist - proceed with the ruthless efficiency of professionals, though experience has done little to temper Jem's impulsiveness. Jem decides that they'll take the bank's manager, Claire (Rebecca Hall), hostage, and though they let her go physically unharmed, they've left a considerable pscyhological imprint. When they learn afterwards that she lives in Charlestown, they agree that they need to make sure she doesn't know anything that could link them to the crime. Not wanting hot-headed Jem to make a bad situation worse, Doug opts to take care of it himself.

Doug "meets" Claire in a laundromat and begins a relationship with her which inspires him to want more out of life. Certainly he doesn't want to end up like his father (Chris Cooper), who will spend the rest of his life in prison. He tells Jem that their next job will be his last but his declaration meets with fierce resistance. For one thing, Jem doesn't want to break up the crew. For another, he doesn't want to let Doug walk out on Krista (Blake Lively), his on-again, off-again girlfriend who is also Jem's sister. Furthermore, their boss, Fergie (Pete Postlethwaite), isn't willing to let him walk away and warns Doug that bad things will happen to people he loves unless he falls back in line. Doug reluctantly agrees to play ball, though he knows that the heat - in the form of FBI agent Frawley (Jon Hamm) - is on and the walls are closing in.

The acting in the film is very strong, as it should be with such a great cast. Doug is the strong silent type and Affleck plays him well, especially against Renner, whose Jem is a bundle of energy looking for a means to violently expend itself; Doug is the calm, Jem is the storm. Though he makes a lot of noise about the trouble Claire could bring them, Jem is the real wild card, the character whose actions threaten to bring hell down on everyone, and Renner pretty much steals the show. Hall, Hamm and Lively all turn in solid performances, though their characters never get to become much more than "types" and Postlethwaite and Cooper make the most of little screentime (Cooper is only in one scene but it's an effective and memorable one).

The direction here is confident and assured, particularly in the action scenes. There's a terrific chase sequence through narrow streets about half-way through the film that makes for a great set-piece, as does the prolonged shoot-out that marks the story's climax. The quieter moments of the film are handled equally well, firmly establishing a sense of place and the rules of the setting. Early on Doug and Claire have a discussion about kids calling her a "tunie," a conversation which nicely addresses the changes that gentrification is bringing to the established order of the neighborhood without beating the audience over the head with the point. The only real criticism that I have of the screenplay is that the ending seems a little too tidy and, perhaps, not fully earned. It isn't enough of a character-driven drama for the ending to comfortably fit with the rest of the film. Still, it's a solid effort and, alongside Gone, Baby, Gone, announces Affleck as a director worth watching.

Review: Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

* * * 1/2
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Scarlett Johnansson, Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz

There’s something comforting to me about those familiar white on black titles that begin every Woody Allen film. Seeing them, I know that I’m about to enter a world where the people (most of them, anyway) speak intelligently, have interesting ideas, and prove that you can be the smartest person in the world but still be a complete idiot when it comes to relationships. Sometimes – especially lately – the promise contained in those opening titles is disappointed and sometimes it is not. Vicky Cristina Barcelona is perhaps not destined to become a classic like Annie Hall or Manhattan, but I still walked out of it very happy.

Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Christina (Scarlett Johnasson) are two Americans spending the summer in Barcelona. Vicky, who is engaged, is working on her Master’s thesis about Catalan culture and Christina is more or less just along for the ride. They meet a painter named Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) who invites them to spend the weekend with him. Vicky is appalled by his forwardness, but Christina is intrigued and talks her into accepting his offer. After an evening of wine and oysters, Christina falls ill, leaving Vicky and Juan Antonio to their own devices, which results in them spending the night together. Later, after guilt has caused Vicky to retreat back into her studies, Juan Antonio and Christina pick up where they left off. Soon, however, another woman moves into the picture to disrupt the harmony of their relationship – Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz), Juan Antonio’s ex-wife.

The story plays out as a series of couplings and uncouplings, simultaneous couplings and unrequited couplings. When he first encounters Vicky and Christina, Juan Antonio explains to them that life is meaningless, love fleeting, that the moment and the moment alone is worth living for. The film itself seems to follow this philosophy, as various characters find themselves dissatisfied in their relationships and flirting with the possibility of beginning new ones, only to find something lacking in these new relationships as well. If there is any one message in the film, I suppose it’s that there’s no such thing as perfect, lasting happiness, and that all things are transitory.

The performances in the film are uniformly good and reminded me of something which I often find myself thinking after seeing a Woody Allen film, which is that of all directors working today, I think he’s the most consistently great at directing women and giving them interesting characters to play. Christina is a dilettante who has adopted the role of the “free spirit” with all its inherent clichés, but ultimately doesn’t really know herself yet, and Johansson plays all these notes to perfection. Maria Elena is a tempestuous artist who perhaps plays up that tempestuousness because she’s an artist and it’s expected of her, and when Cruz enters the fray the polite energy of the film changes completely and new dimensions are given to the story. Vicky is the kind of woman who will (almost) always do exactly what is expected of her because, as she herself admits, she lacks the courage to be more like Christina. As Vicky, Hall was the biggest surprise for me – Cruz has been getting the lion’s share of the attention for the film, but Hall is just as worthy, making her character, who might simply have been the shrill stick in the mud, effortlessly relatable and likeable.

I enjoyed Vicky Cristina Barcelona a great deal, though I concede that it isn’t a masterpiece. There is a narrator who intrudes throughout to tie the details together, which has the effect of making this the cinematic equivalent of a particularly well-written summer beach read. It’s light and breezy, easily consumed and not especially challenging, but the perfect complement to a lazy summer day.