Mickey 17

Essential Worker

or

"Go Ye Forth and Multiply"

Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) has a sketchy past-he has an issue with a loan-shark-and so he wants to get off-planet as soon as possible. Fortunately, there's a private mission to the planet Niflheim that has been spear-headed by a former Senator Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) to form a colony where he's the Supreme Leader (Marshall has lost his last two elections and no doubt wants to leave democracy behind). Mickey, seeing the long lines of potential volunteers for the exploration flight, volunteers to be an "expendable"--a low-level worker position that no one wants, mostly because the fine-print is egregious, saying that he can be assigned guinea-pig positions that will probably kill him, at which point he will be "re-printed" body and mind, his memories downloaded into the new Mickey. In the 4.5 years it takes to get to Niflheim, he's died and been re-manufactured 11 times. Once land-fall occurs, Micky dies a few more times testing the environment and the various vaccines for the planet's endemic diseases, before anyone else is allowed out in the glacial environment. And, at the time of the movie's start, he is Mickey 17.

But, at the movie's start, that won't last long. 17's fallen into a crevasse in the freezing cold, nothing's broken, but there's no way he can get out. His co-hort from Earth, Timo (Steven Yeun), has a job as a pilot and he could rescue him from his predicament...but, hey, why bother? They're just going to make another one, anyway. He leaves with a genuine "Hey, nice knowing you. Have a nice death." And a question everyone asks, "Hey...what's it like to die?" After all, Mickey's had experience.

I won't give too much away, but 17 survives the fall and the cold and is only too happy to get back to the base-camp where he gets a bit of a shock. Despite the lack of protocol and general laxity of safety conditions—especially in the science department—it seems they're very johnny-on-the-spot (or one should say Mickey-on-the-spot) for replacing their expendable: another Mickey has already been re-printed, who, of course, is Mickey 18. Because cloning is not an exact science, 18 is a bit more aggressive and less forgiving than his predecessor (hey, he's young, having only a few hours of life to his credit). But, the two have an immediate problem: duplicates are illegal in the colony and so, they it's a literal case of there not being room enough for the two of them, which makes both Mickeys beside themselves.

One of them, then, has to go. Although they basically have the same brain, they are of two minds on the matter. 18, of course, says that because 17 is considered dead, he's overstayed his welcome and he needs to die; 17 considers 18 to be unnecessary and superfluous and so he should be the one to die. Neither one of them wants to have a twin—do they split their rations?—and, besides, Mickey 17 has a girlfriend, Nasha (Naomi Ackie), who's one of the base's security forces, and although she's intrigued with the possibilities, neither one of the Mickeys are into open relationships.

The problem is, the question of who lives and who dies is out of all of their hands—duplicates are illegal and if it's one thing former Senator Marshall is consistent at it's in following the rules that he's put in place (and that's just about the only thing he's consistent about other than maintaining absolute power over the colony). This puts Nasha and the two Mickeys in conflict with the social order and their functions, but, hey, movies need conflict and there's quite a lot of it in Mickey 17.

It's clever, entertaining, and adaptor-director Bong Joon Ho (he of Parasite, Mother, and The Host) has created another of his intricate little "trap" movies where you wonder where he might be going with it, but it's less devious then his previous films, and suffers from a "Chekhov's gun" situation which makes the resolution of the film feel slightly telegraphed and less of a surprise than in previous work. There are a couple superfluous characters (besides the extra Mickey) and one sees a trope (let's be kind and call it "inspiration") from an early "Star Trek" episode that makes it seem overly-familiar. That's a slight disappointment. 

And he gets entertaining work from his cast—Pattinson plays dual roles, of course (actual multiple versions of the same character), and, dang, if you can't tell the two of them apart merely by his playing of them, and Ackie has never been more kinetic as she is here. Ruffalo and Toni Collette (playing Marshall's Lady MacBeth of a wife) play it broad, but then, the characters are broad, as most autocratic figures are before they fall into the self-destruction of self-parody.

That broadness will, no doubt, raise hackles in some quarters, but those hackles are always on the alert, anyway. Best to look at the more subtle statement Mickey 17 is making about the irony of "essential workers" being regarded as the most disposable in business and governmental circles. Twas ever thus, whether it's in war, shirtwaist factories, or food-processing plants during a pandemic, this "dammit-I-can-have-it-both-ways" canard of the powerful sees far less exposure than it should. I'd like to see more of it, if only in the public interest.

 

The novel on which Mickey 17 is based has a sequel called "Antimatter Blues", but if it gets made into a movie, I'm sure they'll call it Mickey 19.

Wilhelm Alert @ 01:17:00

 

Nope

Yep!

or

Close Encounters of the Herd Kind
 

"Nahum 3:6: I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile, and make you a spectacle."

 

Jordan Peele has made you a spectacle—not of you, but for you—and like any great spectacle, sublime or tragic, you can't look away.

 

Nope is about a bunch of things—about people's need for the spectacular, and to believe anything to fulfill it, it's about instinct versus learning, about how neither one can save you when you're considered merely prey, and that Nature has its own "advantage" baked in just like a casino.

 

It's also about how we're all animals, basically, and no sophistication of the cerebral cortex can erase the fact that we're all made of meat. It's like Peele has melded Steven Spielberg's first hits Jaws and Close Encounters with their separate senses of primal terror and ecstatic wonder and smooshed them together to make one over-the-top bonkers film, one that's gorgeous to look at (lensed by Hoyte Van Hoytema) has a great, itchy score, and has enough humor and suspense to make you forget you might be watching a "message" movie. It has "bite."

In Aqua Dulce, California, The Haywood Hollywood Horses training facility squats like a dry oasis. The Haywood's are descendants of the African American jockey photographed in Eadweard Muybridge's The Horse in Motion, one of the very earliest cabinet card sets, which, in turn, was used in early zoopraxiscope presentations, making it the first motion picture projection presentation, some 12 years before Edison, and eight years before the proposals of Louis LePrince in France.

Now, the Haywood ranch is run by Otis Haywood (Keith David—you'll recognize him by his distinctive narrator's voice), who still supplies trained animals for films. One day, out with his son O.J. (Otis Jr. played by Daniel Kaluuya), Otis Sr. is killed when metal objects fall inexplicably out of the sky and he is killed by a nickel plunging through his eye and embedding in his skull. His kids, O.J. and Emerald (Keke Palmer) try to keep the ranch afloat, but it's hard going. O.J. is not the most communicative soul, dealing with horses better than people, most specifically his sister "Em" who is focusing on her own career as a writer, director, producer and less on the old horse business. 

As a result, O.J. is selling off horses to a recent nearby attraction, Jupiter's Claim, a western theme park run by Ricky "Jupe" Park (Steven Yeun), former child actor, and one of the survivors of the infamous "Gordy's Home" Incident—where, years earlier—and, for us, at the beginning of the movie—on the set of a comedy television series, a chimpanzee, startled by a popping helium balloon, viciously attacked the other performers, killing and maiming them. Ricky runs the park, but also exploits the tragedy by charging the obsessed, tours through his personal memorabilia from "The Incident".

Then, one dark and stormy night, O.J. notices that one of the horses is out of the stable, and when he investigates, sees that electricity is shutting down around the area, and a sand tornado touches ground, spooking the horse, and making it run. It's dark and all, but O.J. thinks he sees an object moving through the sky, fast, followed by an eerie sound of terror. When he comes back home, the lights are back on, but he's spooked. Something weird is going on.

Emerald hears O.J.'s story and her impulse is to get it on camera and exploit it—get "the money shot", or, better still, get "the Oprah shot"—so they head to the local Fry's (one's still open?), where their insistence on security cameras that can look UP and can operate once the grid goes down attracts the interest of one of the employees, Angel (Brandon Perea) who helps them install their systems. A conspiracy wonk, he links in to their system on their first night to get "footage" which fails, due to natural and unnatural-to-Earth interference. Another incident brings in the interest of cinematographer Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott), obsessed with obtaining "the impossible shot."

Around about here things get less speculative and more specific, but the group's attempts to record the UFO—"They're called UAP's now"—are intertwined with each participant's specialty skills: Holst's photography skills, O.J.'s training skills, Angel's ability...to be irritating, frankly, and Emerald's inability to stick to the plan. They're disparate attitudes and personalities almost makes them akin to the Pequod's crew hunting "Moby Dick." But, their prickly desert personalities all make their stake-out a multi-layered and evolving plan.

My description of thing makes it sound simple, but Peele's approach is anything but, starting with opening with that "Gordy's Home" incident—which apparently has nothing to do with the movie, except to serve as a background motivation for one of the characters. Then, he goes to that "raining metal" sequence, and jumps forward to some time later, when the ranch is having hard times. It's disorienting and you wonder if you're missing something. You're not. Peele's just building the mystery and tightening the screws, as he builds in details to explain something unexplainable (although a couple of things will never be explained). It's like he's training us.

And it works gang-busters. I defy anyone not to be peering at all points of the screen for a tell-tale sign as you peer along with the characters for a glimpse of the mystery. And that's part of the fun. Peele has, so far, at least, included the audience as part of the drama, making them co-conspirators in his manipulation games. He directs the gaze, but he also indicts the mind. Here, he's made something mesmerizing enough that we can't take our eyes off it. And, ironically, that's just the sort of thing that could doom the characters. One can almost hear Peele cackling in the background at the joke of it all. "Fools! You'd be snapped up in a minute!"

But, Nope is a step forward. Here, he's making a movie that satisfies his need for detail, but boils it down to simple concepts that are achievable (and perceivable) as visually spectacular. His last film, Us, reached for something big, but couldn't quite achieve it because the conception of it was interesting...but not awe-inspiring. Here, he goes for the Big Moments and pulls them off extraordinarily, without overwhelming the tension of the movie. Nope is a step up for a film-maker who's just exploring his abilities, while paying homage to, but not whole-sale stealing from, the movies that inspired him. Peel had me at Get Out, but I'm looking forward to his next one with even higher expectations.