Project Hail Mary is based on a book by Andy Weir, who also wrote the novel The Martian, which Ridley Scott adapted into a film in 2015. I liked The Martian a lot, and felt it owed a lot of its success to its lead, Matt Damon.
I read The Martian, and found it incredibly dull; just not my jam. I have not read Project Hail Mary, but I have a feeling the books are very similar, and directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller may have learned an important lesson from the movie version of The Martian: in order to make a story filled with a lot of science talk interesting, you need to cast someone very charismatic to deliver all that science talk. And Project Hail Mary works almost entirely because of Ryan Gosling's performance as reluctant astronaut Ryland Grace.
The Earth is dying because something is draining the sun of its power. And not only the sun, but several other stars in the universe. Middle school teacher and molecular biologist Grace is approached by a government agency, led by Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller, giving a wonderfully dry performance) to help figure out just what is happening, since his previous work in molecular biology...is somehow related.
Like I said, the detailed science stuff isn't my bag, and I'm not as entertaining as Ryan Gosling is in explaining it, but trust me that within the film, it does make sense. Grace is happy to help with the research, but draws the line at going into space. Of course, he does end up in space, and while there, pairs up with an unusual life form that is also trying to prevent the death of a star.
This pairing is both the comedic and emotional hearts of the film, and at times, the sentimentality is a little heavy handed, but Gosling prevents it from ever falling into maudlin territory. At a little over two hours and thirty minutes, Project Hail Mary is way, way too long, especially for a story that treads some well worn science fiction tropes. Also, for a movie filmed for IMAX and set in space, there weren't a lot of moments where I felt truly in awe of what I was seeing, even though I know that was the intent. Ultimately, this huge movie succeeds in smaller ways, and primarily because Ryan Gosling proves he can have chemistry with the unlikeliest of costars, even a rock.
I have a feeling the new horror movie undertone may become a victim of its own pre-release hype. Any time a horror movie gets hyped up as the "scariest movie in years," it's bound to disappoint people. But that doesn't mean the movie is bad, it just means its marketing is.
And OK yeah, I am sure there are some people who are utterly terrified by slow camera pans to the left that reveal...nothing. I am not. But I am impressed when seeing, or more accurately, hearing things I've never heard in a horror movie before, and undertone is ultimately an aural horror movie experience. (If you're going to see it in a theater, see it in a Dolby theater. And if you're going to watch it at home, wear headphones.)
Storywise it centers on Evy (Nina Kiri) the co-host of the paranormal podcast The Undertone, in which she is essentially the Scully to her co-host Justin's Mulder. (He's played by Adam DiMarco, but is never seen.) Justin lives in London, while Evy is living back in her childhood home in the States, caring for her dying mother (Michèle Duquet). That home (which is the director Ian Tuason's actual childhood home) is filled with Catholic art and knickknacks, which are creepy enough during normal hours, but take on an even creepier tone at 3am, the hour Evy records the podcast, to better align with her co-host's working hours.
The episode Evy and Justin are recording focuses on a series of recordings Justin received in which a man essentially starts recording his partner so they can try and figure out what she has been saying when she talks in her sleep. Of course, what he ends up recording is much more than that.
If it sounds like this movie is essentially just watching a woman listen to spooky recordings, you wouldn't be wrong. What makes it hit or miss is if you find those recordings spooky and compelling yourself. I felt the film did an excellent job of building up extreme tension purely through the use of sound and visual suggestion. But a buildup without a satisfying payoff can be damned disappointing, and that's how I felt coming out of undertone; to put it bluntly, it whiffs its ending. Not bad enough to negate the entire film, but enough to suggest you tamper the expectations set up by the film's marketing,
Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride! is one of the most disappointing movies I've ever seen, primarily because the concept, a bride of Frankenstein story set in 1930's Chicago, just seems tailor made to my interests. Unfortunately the end result is much more than that, and that's its biggest problem.
To start, Mary Shelley opens the film as a kind of narrator. Shot close up and in black and white, Mary is very angry. She's upset she was never able to write the story she wanted to tell, and sees that now is her chance. It's not entirely clear if the story she's telling is the movie we're watching, or if she's in fact possessing Ida, a gangster's moll in 1936 Chicago. Perhaps it's both, because both Ida and Mary are played by Jessie Buckley.
Ida is murdered and quickly dug up by Frankenstein (Christian Bale) - who identifies as Frankenstein, and not Frankenstein's monster, because, as he tells it, Frankenstein was his father's name. He's been wandering the world for over 100 years, and wants "an intercourse." Luckily local mad scientist Dr. Euphronious (Annette Benning) has the skills and lab necessary to fulfill just such a request.
And thus the "motherfucking Bride of Frankenstein!," to quote the ghost of Mary, is born, with a shock of platinum hair and a permanent black pout that bleeds into a splash across her cheek - the result of vomiting up whatever the concoction it is that has reanimated her.
From there the movie goes in many directions. Too many directions. Ida, who is soon re-christened Penelope, and "Frank," become outlaw lovers on the run, wanted for murder - some of it justified. They are pursued by both the mob, and a pair of detectives played by Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz. They hide out in more than one movie theater, watching Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal), Frank's favorite matinee idol, sing and dance on screen. They crash a party that turns into an elaborate musical number. They take to the rails. They steal a car. They have the kind of sex you'd expect two reanimated corpses to have. (Scars and fluids - not the usual kind - are involved.)
Granted, all of this sounds like it could be fun. But there is too much of it, and none of it ever meshes together. Scenes are repeated, and then go on too long. Buckley resorts to guttural screaming too often, and Bale, who has never passed up an opportunity to mumble through a role, mumbles like hell through this one.
But perhaps its biggest sin is just how didactic and heavy handed Gyllenhaal's screenplay is. It's a story about women's autonomy, consent, and sexual violence, and she's going to make damn sure you don't forget it. And sure, perhaps subtlety isn't something you should expect from a movie featuring monsters boning. But there's got to be a more artful way to convey your message than to have the Bride actually scream "Me toooooo!!!!!!!" more than once.
Hoppers, Pixar's 30th film, may not hit the emotional punches of some of the studio's earlier classics, but neither have a lot of their recent offerings. It almost feels like with this film, they decided to not even try to wrench those ugly tears, and instead just focused on laughs. In that, they succeed.
Mabel (voiced by Piper Curda) is a 19-year-old college student and impassioned environmentalist and animal lover determined to save her beloved local forest glade from destruction due to the freeway the mayor (Jon Hamm) is intent on building. Canvasing for signatures proves fruitless, so when she discovers her college professor (Kathy Najimy) has developed a technology that allows humans to "hop" into lifelike animal robots, Mabel "hops" into a beaver and ventures into the forest in an attempt to convince the animals to return, en mass, to the glade they've been driven out of.
If Hoppers sounds like Avatar but with animals, you'd be right, and the movie even gets meta with that comparison when Mabel brings it up to the professor, who vehemently denies her experiment is anything like Avatar all. Of course cute talking animals are a staple of animated films, but some of the film's biggest laughs come from the communication gap between the animals and some of the humans they encounter. While Mabel is in robotic form, she can communicate with animals. But neither she, nor the animals, can communicate with humans, and hence you have what may become even more meme-able moments involving iPhones, Siri, and emojis.
Listen, I am a sucker for cute animals of any kind, and slapstick humor always makes me laugh, and Hoppers is filled with both. I still can't get over Meryl Streep's cameo as an insect queen who has one of the most memorable exists every given a character in a Pixar film. That audacious moment alone makes the film worth seeing.