Emilia Pérez

The Exhumation of the Dead

or

Careful, There's No Railing

 

Jacques Audiard's Emilia Pérez (streaming forever on Netflix) seems purposely designed to make half of America's head explode. A musical with a trans protagonist who decides to quit their life as a drug kingpin and to become a woman. It's both a practical decision—he wants out of the drug trade, which guarantees a short life expectancy and he has a wife and kids that he adores—and a personal one—he wants a clean soul and to be true to himself, and his life in the macho world of the drug-trade just doesn't lend itself to his aspirations. He wants out, both of the way of the cartels and the way he must live his life as a merciless no-nonsense drug lord. 

Easier said than done.

 

Top-lining the film is Zoe Saldaña as attorney Rita Mora Castro, who we first see writing the closing argument for a case she does not believe in, but that ultimately is won, which leaves her conflicted about her profession. She receives an anonymous phone-call that puts it bluntly "Do you want to become rich? I have a proposition for you."

She's directed to a location 10 minutes away, where a car comes to pick her up, a hood is placed over her head, and she is taken to the stronghold of the Los Cabalos drug cartel, run by Juan "Manitas" Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón), the man who made the phone-call. His proposition is this: he wants to "disappear", fake his own death, and to have gender-affirming surgery so that he can live the rest of his life as a woman, with his family transported to Switzerland for their safety. Rita's job is to investigate, advocate, and see to the details to accomplish these goals.

She manages to make all the arrangements and walks away a very rich woman. Four years later at a swank dinner party she meets a woman named Emilia Pérez (Karla Sofía Gascónagain) and suddenly realizes...it's her client.

Audiard dramatizes the moment by shutting off every decorative light in the room, isolating the two women, who are the only people on Earth (well, besides the operating team) who know Emilia's past. For Rita, it's a moment of horror, because why would they suddenly cross paths just four years later—she fears for her life. But Emilia has other plans for Rita; as she accomplished things so well previously, she hires her to arrange to bring his wife (played by Selena Gomez) and his two children back to Mexico, to live with Emilia, who will masquerade as Manitas' sister. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, a lot, apparently. If half the heads of America have exploded, almost all of them have in the story's setting of Mexico. Director Audiard is French and he filmed the movie in Paris. Only one of the principal actors is Mexican, and the script has been criticized for its confusion of Spanish and Mexican idioms as well as incorrect uses of pronouns, and for those "in the know" the accents are all over the place, needing to have them explained away in some expositional dialogue and for all this the movie is considered something of a pariah in Mexico. There are various controversies at the core of Emilia Pérez, but they've tended to eclipse some of the more problematic aspects to the film.

Before we get into that, the performances, however untechnical in terms of accents, are game. Gascón, a trans actor, is great in both roles she plays, and manages to garner empathy, while retaining an element that makes you suspect she could snap at any minute. Selena Gomez does well with her role as Manitas' wife, who realizes her place as a pawn in the relationship, but has just enough brio to make her own choices when given a long enough leash. But, the stand-out is Saldaña, who has done well for herself in well-established roles even if they're CGI enhanced, but here she gets to show her abilities as singer and dancer and she electrifies at it, while also going through some pretty complex emotions in transition scenes when the professional veneer she maintains drops.

Now, the downside...for a musical, the music isn't that great, for the most part taking the "Hamilton" approach of scatting between beats with lyrics that are better than the ones in, say, Annette, but far from memorable. The piece was first designed as an operetta, so the songs are just syncopated dialog revealing inner thoughts that transactional dialog is too plain to convey and the way they're presented is director-heavy music-video mode, where the camera does most of the dancing.

But, the part of the movie that irritates me is it's very old-fashioned in its way of dealing with the trans issues. To tell you why would reveal too much of the plot, but let's just say there's no such thing as redemption in Emilia Pérez. No second chances. It says, you may live a new life, but you will pay for the sins of the previous one...which, given the fact that the character tries to redeem herself with a charitable organization to provide answers to the families of victims of drug-cartels, is very Old Testament. You could argue that Manitas was a drug-lord, that he's destroyed so many lives she doesn't deserve to atone or to achieve atonement. Point taken. The crimes one then does are a forever-trap, despite secular ideas of reformation or religious ones of penance absolving them.

But, if that's so, it's akin (to the nth degree) to the faux-pas of "dead-naming" a trans person. Does blame transcend sexual identity? Does guilt? And if a person changes their life to atone for the sins of their past, to try to make it right for the survivors, is it atonement, or is it "too little too late." But, somebody just didn't have the chops to "go there." Emilia Pérez completely by-passes any deep-thought for melodrama and a conclusion for complex moral arguments right out of the Hays Code. It's annoying.

There's just enough clutziness to the whole enterprise, that you kind of wish there was a trans director (a Mexican trans director) behind it who might have been a bit more savvy, not only to the possibilities, but also the problems. Audiard has done some great work in the past (Une Prophete and Rust and Bone), but this one, he overreached and stylistic story-telling or satirical elements cannot camouflage the inherent issue of being a bit behind the curve when dealing with gender-politics. 

 

Emilia Perez is content to merely be outrageous. Well, they got the outrage. Just not the kind they were expecting.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

"The (10th) Greatest Marvel Film Since Avengers: Endgame!"

or

"The Ballad of Rocket Raccoon"

 

I notice an up-tick in the number of people who looked at my review of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. I've long since stopped trying to figure out the patterns of what people are looking at, but I suppose it had something to do withe the release of Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3—the movie that James Gunn was working on when he got hired as the High Evolutionary of the DC Movie Universe.

But, there was no incentive to see it. I haven't watched the last couple of Marvel movies, as they've been sputtering as far as quality, depending on call-backs, cameos, or with no clear sense of where things are going—other than contracts need to be fulfilled, promises made must be delivered on, and a general running-in-place while Kevin Feige tries to come up with a follow-up to the colossal success that was the first batch of Marvel movies. It seemed like, at those times, they were taking chances, swinging for the fences, and hitting home-tuns. Now, it seems they're just counting the receipts, waiting for the Next Big Thing to happen.

 

Trouble is the fan-base is lying in wait. Disappointments among the "TrueFans" may collapse the enterprise like a stack of back-issues no one's bothered to box.

 

Still, folks DID look at the review. I made a point to see it. 

How is it? A pretty good send-off, actually, while being something different. It's an origin story of sorts—of how Rocket the Raccoon (voiced again by Bradley Cooper) came to be a wise-cracking, take-no-prisoners, but still fuzzy-funny animal came to be, mostly told in flash-back, after he is left near-death after an attack on Guardians of the Galaxy HQ (Planet Knowhere) by Adam Warlock (Will Poulter). The super-powered Warlock is on a mission to steal the mercurial mammal for his mother, Queen Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki) of the Sovereigns at the behest of The High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), a sort of gene-split Dr. Mengele/Dr. Moreau of Space, who's on a mission to create the perfect utopia based on his manipulating evolutionary traits.

Yeah, that trick NEVER works, but His Highness (Evolutionarily) wants Rocket—or as he designates him, Test Subject "89P13"—back, as the little varmint was the only test subject of his that displayed original thought, and may be the key to achieving his perfect utopia. Too bad that the way to get him back puts him in a coma.

The Guardians band together to try to save Rocket's life, but discover that he has an implanted kill-switch on his heart that will explode him if they trying any extraordinary efforts to save him. But, Peter "The Star-Lord" Quill (Chris Pratt), still nursing a broken heart after losing his lost love Gamora (Zoe Saldana) during the events of "The Blip"—then getting back an earlier version of her that can't stand him—determines that he's going to find the code to disable the kill-switch and save his little bandit-buddy, even if he has to travel the Galaxy, kill a bunch of multi-legged creatures and even *gulp* face his ex-girl-friend to do it.

And so, they do, over 2½ hours (which feels it, probably due to some rocky transitions that director Gunn has trouble with), meeting new friends and old friends of Gunn's in new roles (Nathan Fillion, anyone?), squeezing in Sylvester Stallone (the guy cannot handle tech-talk), Liz Debicki, and even an appearance by Howard the Duck (voiced by Seth Green, nice), and actually providing "I'm worth-being-here" arcs to Mantis (Pom Klementief) and Kraglin (Sean Gunn). Plus, we get another example of why Karen Gillan may be the most unsung-acting hero in the MCU and a "giving it 100%" performance by Pratt. Throw in a talking space-dog (voiced by Maria Bakalova—"He just called me 'a BAD DOG!'") and you have a vast cornucopia of cutesiness mixed in with Gunn's "ick" factor. Call it "Anthropro-Marvel"—the place where the studio can really get silly (even by comic-book standards).*

Take, for example, the look of the High Evolutionary's Orgosphere—an organic planet made out of meat—which is pure 20th Century Fox sci-fi tacky, ala Fantastic Voyage or Barbarella. It has the look of spareness, but the detail of something well-considered, rather than what the budget could spare. And one just knows, going along that one is missing a gazillion references stuffed into the thing with minor characters and such, but, frankly, there's enough for the non-Marvel Zombie to appreciate.

At the same time, there's a nice little message about universality and worth, where one's lab-rat could just be worth saving if only they were noticed. It's an extension of the original GotG movie, where everyone was, basically, a cast-off, but were worth more than the sum of their parts put together. Here, no one's a loser, except for the one's who never would have suspected they were in the first place. And, once again, it shows that although Gunn will always make films that feel tough-as-nails-cynical, they still have a core of sentimentality to them that puts them a notch above the usual super-hero fare.

 

It's a good movie for the series to go out on (if, indeed, it ends).

* Although judging by the Marvels trailer, they're not going to stop there.

Avatar: The Way of Water

It's All About...Family

or 

Fleeing Na'vi Dad
 

I was one of the few inhabitants of this planet that was unimpressed with James Cameron's Avatar—the most popular movie of all time (based on inflated movie receipts, truth be told). I felt it was Cameron at his worst—recycling shop-worn ideas under a veneer of technology and engineering—while also being a fun watch (if you didn't take it too damned seriously).

 

The sequel (first sequel) Avatar: The Way of Water was released at Christmas, and I was in no hurry to see it. I wanted to avoid big crowds, I wasn't "enthused" because I was underwhelmed (while being simultaneously over-stimulated) by the first and expected "more of the same." I also knew that it would be around in theaters for awhile, maybe even held in 3-D (where most movie-chains drop the refinements down to "Standard version" after a week). But, mostly I waited because James Cameron was in no hurry to release it, so why should I be in a hurry to see it. I mean, what's the rush? It wasn't going anywhere.

I did go see it, finally, in XD and 3-D. You might as well go the full yard. And, I found that to be a wise decision, as it brought up many aspects to the film, which I wouldn't even have noticed had I seen it "flat" and "standard." In fact, what is a tad revolutionary in the film and—to me, anyway—makes it worth seeing are the technical aspects of the film, which have achieved a new threshold in presentation of-screen.

 

It's certainly not the story, which can be Cameron's Achilles Heel. Concept, sure. But, what he does with it, not so much. His movies look good on paper, like an architect's sketch, but the blue-prints fleshing it out may reveal some flaws where hard reality conflicts with imagination.

A:TWOW begins with Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), now permanently on his surrogate-planet, Pandora, living with his mate Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña, who clearly knows how to eke out a subtle, effective performance from motion capture) and their kids, Notoyam (Jamie Flatters), Lo'ak (Britain Dalton), and Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), as well as adopted kids Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), the child of Dr. Grace Augustine's avatar, produced by immaculate conception of something, and "Spider" (Jack Champion), the son of Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), both of whom died in the original film.

Well, they're baaa-ack. Dr. Grace as a hologramatic image and spiritual Obi-Wan, and Quaritch as a hologramatic image and his own avatar (something, as I recall, that the original Col. Miles was dead-set against...oh, well...blue-prints). Quaritch's avatar is given one of those too-lame-to-be-inspirational Quaritch pep-talks about how he needs to man-up and take down Jake Sully because...well, he has to. Jake beat him last time fair and square, by having his wife shoot him, but...ya know...there was a conspiracy and rigged voting machines and Quaritch has no life but a huge ego and...blue-prints. There IS no reason for him to revenge himself against Sully, even if one doesn't include the fact the original character is dead and his avatar is only vengeful-by-proxy...and he's told to do it.

As specious as all this seems, it's enough to send Jake and family packing to another part of Pandora as refugees and depend on the kindness of the Metkayina tribe who live on Pandora's eastern seaboard and have a society based mostly on water and the denizens therein.* They must fight discrimination from the Metkayina ("they'll take our jobs!" and, more legitimately, "they'll lead the Earthers right to us!"). Along the way, Jake's kids want to sit at the BIG kid's table, and complicate matters. 

Not that there's much to contemplate. Earthers are bad. Pandorans are good. Earthers-gone-Native are good. Sometimes, parents just don't understand. At some point, Belle from The Little Mermaid should show up and do an "I know, right?"

"Jake! This is where we first met!"

 

But, as simple as it is, it's a three hour movie and Cameron fills the spaces with a lot of his Greatest Hits: two equally matched fighters slugging it out in an industrial setting (pick a Terminator, any Terminator), learning how to manage your breathing underwater (The Abyss) and finally, having to get out from under-deck of a sinking boat (Titanic). Things look different in Metkayina—the folks are greenish around their gills—but it doesn't matter where Cameron goes, there he is. It's very familiar.

Except when it's not. Kudos to the design team to make the Metkayina look like a different culture (I think, by now, movie-goers are hep to accepting and even embracing that concept). But, the real eye-opener is how good the CGI (mostly from New Zealand's WETA) has gotten. Performances are sharper and subtle (as I said, Saldana shines at this), and they even manage to make a Sigourney Weaver character look "right"—I remember there were audible grunts of disappointment at the appearance of her avatar in the last one as the CGI looked "uncanny-valleyish."

Look at the subtlety of expression in Saldana's character.

She is clearly giving Sully the "Dad's being a little heavy-handed" look

 

The CGI characters are so good and so realized that when a real-life human being shares the screen with them, they look flat and slightly less real (the human actors do have the disadvantage of being subject to gravity) than their pixelated counterparts. Maybe it's the effects of 3-D capture, or the differences between reflected lighting and computerized grading, but this is particularly true in the character of Spider, who often gets lost in the wash of images and is bound by the limits of movement bound by the laws of physics. Now, that will be an interesting challenge for Cameron and other film-makers in the future.

There are still issues with close objects "fritzing" as they move across the screen, so maybe objects should be less enfolded in the scenery.** Where the 3-D really, really works are in shots of floating screens and in the underwater shots that dominate the second hour of the film. Cameron went to the trouble of filming his motion-captured actors in a studio water-tank swimming about and there's something about the heavy influence of water and the languid way things move in it that feels particularly realistic with CGI rendering and 3-D projection, far more effectively than with the open-air scenes. It's a particularly effect feat of magical image-making that is incredibly credible and remarkable.

Now, if they could apply the same ingenuity to the scripting as they apply to the technology, that would be something. Maybe like losing the Quaritch character and its lunatic revenge story-line, would allow Cameron to concentrate on something worth the effort, both on his and our parts.

 

* Jake never once thinks that his leaving may not deter Quadritch from laying waste to the Omaticaya, anyway. Because he was so subtle and nuanced in his approach LAST time?

** There is a caveat to this: some of the "Ridley-Scott-fluff" that Cameron inserts into the frame doesn't always "work" but his insects were good enough to provoke the kid in the seat in front of me to reach out to try and grab them. That's a good (if amusing) testament.

Vantage Point (2008)

Vantage Point (Pete Travis, 2008) An American news crew sits in their van in Salamanca, Spain, technically coordinating coverage of a Presidential visit. No sooner does POTUS (William Hurt) take the podium when two shots ring out, sending him flying, to the horror of the news-people, the Secret Service, the crowded throng and the millions who are (probably not) watching at home. For a split-second, there is reaction all around, and then the confusion starts: where did the shots come from, who's that running guy, get the president to the hospital, foot-chase. At the end of it, a lot of people are dead, and the ramifications are huge, while the news channels try to play catch up...and one suspects never will.

   

This one's just plain crazy. The same 15 minutes, played out, rewound, clock started again, and POV switched. Technically, it's a daunting challenge, with all the shots of things that have gone before shifted into the background, and having to match what went before in the same time-frame that it did before, although one later incident seems to be fudged a little longer to allow some exposition in one segment (all the better to build suspense). The director, Pete Travis, mostly known for his British television work) does one thing that always drives me nuts in pot-boiler novels—he takes you to one pop-eye inducing moment...and then...stops and goes back. Next chapter. We'll get back to that...

That would make it "a relentless page-turner" if it had a spine, but you're stuck watching the movie, wondering, "Yeah, but what about..." Annoying. But, not enough to make you hit the "Eject" button.

Source Code did this a little better this year, and had the decency to make all the populace in it more than innocent by-standers.  Most of the characters are there to serve a function in the plot, rather then being motivated, save for Dennis Quaid's Secret Service agent, who has just come back to active duty after taking a bullet for this President six months earlier. The speculation is that he might be a little gun-shy (if so, he wouldn't be put on active duty, now would he?) 

This is the problem with the film. Good concept (even if it is Akira Kurosawa's), but the deeper we go into the movie and the more we find out about this 15 minutes, the situation becomes less and less likely, and more and more contrived. It has the kinetic feel of an episode of "24" compressed and spread out over a ninety minute running time. And, it isn't even "The Rashomon Effect," where (when it's done well) the differing perspectives are colored by the person telling the story. Here, facts are facts—it just happens from different angles, how the person feels about it doesn't enter into things. In that regard, Vantage Point is just a standard detective thriller, more about information dissemination in an electronic 24 hour news cycle, rather than saying anything about the human condition—besides the obvious jumping to conclusions. The film begins and ends in that van and the broadcast of events, making the point that there's a photon-filter between truth and knowledge. At the end, the news audience does not know, and may never know exactly what went down. But, given what we already know about the efficacy of reporting "while it happens," the endless speculation and rumor-airing and other apocrypha and opinion that's offered as journalism, it is a bit of a hollow exercise, a "gimmick" movie without that much to offer.

Is it a good movie? I don't know.

Star Trek (2009)

Written at the film's engagement. Some thoughts follow after.

"I Dare You To Do Better"

I got a call from the Captain about 5 o'clock (that'd be 2000 hours for him) on Friday, and when I saw who it was, I called him back and said "I know what this is about."

The Captain is a life-long Trekker. He knows the arcana of "Star Trek" in its canon, that being the television series—both broadcast and syndicated—and film. Plus, he's a little "inside," having drinks with the late Majel Barrett Roddenberry, introducing Patrick Stewart to "Buzz" Aldrin, and calling up Jonathan Frakes the day show creator Gene Roddenberry died to talk about "what it all meant."

The Captain knows from "Trek." So I was particularly interested in his take on "The New Version" of J.J. Abrams, or "Star Trek Begins" (a version of which producer Harve Bennett had proposed away back in the time-space continuum before Star Trek V—you know, the Shatner-directed one best forgotten). I'd watched the trailers warily, noting the emphasis on disrobing cadets and slam-bang action (not mutually exclusive), but noting a certain underlying devotion, not entirely slavish, to the original. They weren't trying to re-invent the warp-drive, which was a good thing.

"So..." I said, "what'd ya think?"

"This is the way they should have always done it.." he began.

Yeah. It is.

Star Trek is a rollicking world-and-expectations-shattering version of the Gene Roddenberry original, and most niftily, done in a way that fits within its science-fiction-y concepts. The whole movie is its plot-point and one watches in wonder how the deconstruction happens before one's eyes, while simultaneously nodding acquaintance with the tropes, concepts, and characterizations of the original. One gets the feeling of happy ebullience watching a favorite building imploded with the added delight of seeing it rise simultaneously from its own ashes to be sleeker, shinier and un-compromising.

Part of it is due to budget. Abrams was given a fat check to re-launch Paramount's key franchise (which it had nickeled and dimed into the ground the first time around), so the limitations the creators always had to contend with aren't so apparent. The Enterprise corridors no longer look like motel hallways, Engineering isn't a big space with a back-lit perspective painting behind it, and the aliens restricted to stereo-eyed bipeds with varying head-ridges. No, there's a lot of imagineering going on here in the Enterprise's brave new world of industrial-strength space-faring (at one point the new Captain Kirk sprints—of which he does...a lot—through what I swear was a brewery standing in for some section of the Enterprise's inner workings). 

The creatures have evolved differently* with nonhuman proportions, sometimes tossing out the human baggage entirely. It's a messy universe, but a full one with good ideas and concepts tossed amid the dialogue. It's a "Star Trek" Universe so full of potential, that there's no chance of coming across a creatively bankrupt parallel Earth, although the film manages to do exactly that in its own clever way.

That's the big picture. The question is the actors; the franchise will live or die on how "the New Kids" can portray the old characters. Fortunately, it's where this Star Trek shines. Everyone will have their favorites—mine are Karl Urban's note-perfect blustering McCoy and Simon Pegg's hyper-driven Scotty—but Chris Pine is a genuine find for Captain James Tiberius Kirk, employing none of the Shatnerisms (well, there's one deliberate vocal steal that made me laugh), but supplying the one thing that Shatner always brought to the table—energy. John Cho's Sulu is terrific and it's a hoot to see Russian actor Anton Yelchin employing the wretched "wessels" accent of the original Chekov. 

Zoe Saldana is given much more to do as Lt. Uhura, and given that he had Leonard Nimoy on-set for inspiration, Zachary Quinto might have taken the easy way out with a direct imitation, but his Mr. Spock is far less serene, more volatile and haughty, betraying that human half far more subtly than Nimoy did—and I believe saying that might be a court-martial offense in my house.

Where the other "Trek" movies have fallen down have been the secondary characters, but here they're just as important—Ben Cross and Winona Ryder play the star-crossed parents of Spock, while Bruce Greenwood is a superb Captain Christopher Pike. And Eric Bana, who can be on or off depending on the movie, is terrific as the long-suffering, revenge-driven Romulan Nero.

There will be a lot of sniping from the "Trekkies" who want things their way, or no way—that's to be expected with any "Trek" movie. But in the words of the former Captain Kirk: "Get a life."

Star Trek certainly got a new one.

After-thought: My, my. I did a lot of dancing around on this one because it was imperative not to give too much away (although I was doing some "punning" references to it just to amuse myself). What was wonderful about Abrams' re-boot—far better than his "Star Wars" sequels (although they're entertaining)—was his and the writers pushing "Re-set" on the entire franchise and wiping out the whole old Star Trek Universe in an ingenious time-travel story where another alien goes back in time to kill his version of Hitler, who happens to be Leonard Nimoy's Mr. Spock.

That's just clever and daring and enough to put the fear of interfering with time into anybody. But, it also wiped the creative slate clean. The Vulcans, on whom the Star Trek Universe became so dependent, became a Universal diaspora. Time-lines could be cleaned up—like the "Eugenics War"—and a better Star Trek could be rebuilt without having to necessarily wipe out "Next Generation" and its successors. And if anybody gripes about it, it's just a parallel timeline; the other one still exists, Ramada-In hallways and all.

It was thrilling—in fact, I did a couple of "Sunday Scenes" around this movie—about aspects that just made me smile.

But, it didn't last. The next Abrams Trek (Into Darkness) did the "Khan" story-line a little too soon and a little too derivatively. As I said in that review, with a new Universe to play with, it was too soon to go back to the well. And the third "Kelvin Universe" story, Star Trek Beyond, attempted to do something a bit different, along the lines of the Original Series, but its dependence on a "movie-villain" and its subsequent disappointment (even Idris Elba couldn't do anything with it) was a let-down, and the film under-performed, perhaps because it was less an "event" film than an "episodic" one.

That was four years ago and everybody's getting older. A new Trek movie was stalled when Chris Pine—and Chris Hemsworth (who played "Daddy" Kirk in the first one, indicating it was another time-travel story and a dull one at that)—had contract demands (money or credit) and it stalled. There's talk of two Treks in the works: one a new production and Quentin Tarantino production of a "Star Trek" movie, which—because QT can't keep himself from talking—was revealed to be merely be his version of a Trek story about the Eugenics War. More time-travel? Tarantino seems to be no longer interested (and I never was).

Whatever the future of "Star Trek" in the movies, one hopes that it will "go boldly"...which means that a bolder studio should take control of it as Paramount seems to be fresh out of ideas.

* There is a wickedly funny bar scene where Kirk tries to pick up the comely Lt. Uhura, while between them sits an alien seemingly modeled on the "Spitting Image" version of Leonard Nimoy, when it suddenly dawned on me what it was doing there: "Why the long face?"