"Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die" Review: A Message From A Plausible Future?
There’s nothing like being in the hands of a director that has a vision for the story they want to tell. Director Gore Verbinski’s Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is one of those films. This one had me from the beginning with a closeup of a bottle of Cholula, because it told me further smart choices would be made from this director! (Cholula should be everyone’s hot sauce of choice.) In all seriousness, the opening imagery is a visual spectacle that should be studied in regard to taking a scene we’ve seen a million times and making it interesting. Admittedly, it goes off the tracks in Act III, but it’s refreshing to see a film that swings for the fences!
In a world where people are addicted to their phones, will anyone speak out against it? Hmmm, it sounds like our present day and writer Matthew Robinson obviously has something to get off his chest with his messaging of how we currently live with tech in the story that ensues. In the film, The Man From The Future (Sam Rockwell) bursts into a crowded LA diner to preach a message about the dangers of our technological addiction. The Man’s goal is to find the right combination of people in the diner who will come with him to stop humanity’s impending apocalyptic future. It’s a future in which AI has it out for humanity. Yes, it sounds like The Matrix meets The Terminator but this takes a more eccentric, fantastical approach to its storytelling.
As the rag tag group of patrons, made up of Susan (Juno Temple), Ingrid (Hayley Lu Richardson), Mark (Michael Peña), Janet (Zazie Beetz) and Scott (Asim Chaudhry), are assembled for the over one hundredth time, it becomes clear that The Man seems to know a lot about each patron; this sparks their curiosity to follow him on the journey. Once the film gets going, we get the backstory of each patron. The stories interweave into a clear picture of the motivations for why this just might be the group that saves the world. Will they?
The strength in this film lies in the script. We’ve all probably had a moment where we come out of a doom scroll, had an instance when we look around a restaurant at other tables with people looking down at their phone instead of at each other, or found it strange that what we just said out loud is now an ad presented in our feed. Robinson takes these moments and throws a mirror up to say “this is where we are headed”. It’s a picture of the disconnected, cold-hearted society that we could easily become. It’s a world where a school shooting is an everyday run of the mill thing, classrooms are full of students where phones are stuck to their hands and it gets darker from there. It’s a film that, as a film critic, it forces you to stop taking notes and go for the ride.
Let me be clear, this film gets bonkers. Sam Rockwell does a lot of the heavy lifting in landing on a protagonist that we can follow through his delivery and nuanced performance. The ensemble cast does their part as well, but this feels like vignettes of “Black Mirror” turned into a dark comedy movie over the course of its running time. Robinson’s message is loud, reminiscent of Boots Riley’s Sorry To Bother You, but doesn’t land as sharply. Verbinski and cinematographer James Whitaker paint a picture of a pretty world that doesn’t realize how ugly it is with the camera and light. That’s what resonates and translates. Society never gets to a bad place overnight. It’s the slow burn into apathy that gets us there. If you’re a fan of quirky, adventure, sci-fi films with a message, this might be worth seeing in theaters this weekend.
Rating: B-
"12 Strong" Review
12 Strong is the same song and dance that we’ve seen before with a war film. Directed by first-time director Nicolai Fuglsig, this is also the first war film that producer Jerry Bruckheimer has been involved with since 2001’s Black Hawk Down. Riding the wave as such films like 2013’s Lone Survivor and 2016’s 13 Hours (Iraqi war films that came out in January or expanded wide), 12 Strong is cliché to the capital C and plays it relatively safe. In short, it’s a formulaic film that hits on the same points previous war films go through.
Based on the true story, the film is about Task Force Dagger, a group of twelve American soldiers led by Captain Mitch Nelson (Chris Hemsworth) who are sent into Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. Once they get into the area, they form an uneasy alliance with General Rashid Dostum (Navid Negahban) of the Northern Alliance, and together, they take on the Taliban forces and do their best to defeat them, and as one of the soldiers states, they would be the first twelve Americans to fight back.
On the plus side, the actors do all they can with the material on hand, with the standouts being Michael Shannon and Michael Pena. They are all likeable enough, and there’s more humor in this than what I expected when I saw the trailers. It’s nice to see Hemsworth and his wife Elsa Patsky act together, even though they’re playing a married couple. Some of the scenes work as well, particularly those that involved Hemsworth and Negahban. The pacing of the film, for the most part, was fine. Finally, there were a handful of cool images that Fuglsig and his DP Rasmus Videbæk come up with, whether it’s a horse running alone through a battlefield, or the landscapes of New Mexico doubling for Afghanistan.
As for why this falters, the screenplay that’s credited to Ted Tally (The Silence of the Lambs) and Peter Craig (The Town) does it no favors. For a war film, they hit on the same beats that we see time and time again with these films. With war films, you’re supposed to feel sympathy or relate too the characters that we see on screen. In this film, I didn’t feel for any of the characters as the runtime progressed, and the film is bland enough that I didn’t even know what the characters name were, thus resorting to the actors that were up on the screen. Also, there’s no character development at all in this film, and some characters are underdeveloped. We hear it, but we don’t see it. And Tally and Craig write some cliché dialogue through the course of the film. The cinematography was nothing special, opting to go for the same grittiness that we’ve seen before with war films. As for the action scenes themselves, while they were decently edited for the most part, too many times there were quick cuts to know what’s transpiring on screen, thus making it hard to make sense of the geography of the land. The villain of the film was one-dimensional and they could have trimmed some scenes out and the film would still played the same way.
Overall, while 12 Strong is technically competent, but it’s ultimately a forgettable film. With the subject matter of the story, this could have been an interesting film. Sadly, it just plays it safe. When I came out of the screening, all I had was a shrug. It’s not a bad film per se, but it’s an unmemorable one. You don’t need to rush out and see this opening weekend. This is a film that you could have playing on the background when it makes its eventual debut on TNT. By year’s end, you will probably forget that this film came out this year, if not sooner.
Rating: C
"Ant-Man" Review
Ant-man isn’t a well known name to most moviegoers and lovers of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). In fact, the average reader probably would be interested in knowing that the creation of Ultron was due to Dr. Hank Pym according to the comic books. That being said, “Ant-man” is a solid, scaled back entry into the MCU.
The film begins in 1989 as Dr. Henry “Hank” Pym (Michael Douglas) retires to try and live in seclusion. We then jump to president day where Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) finds himself fresh out of prison. Trying to keep on the straight and narrow and make his child support payments, he looks for work. After Baskin Robbins finds out that he’s an ex-con, he’s let go and turns to his former crime partner and friend, Luis (Michael Pena) for a big score.
Let’s say the score leads Scott to Dr. Pym, who enlists his help to go against Pym’s protege Darren Cross (Corey Stoll). Cross is on the crux of finding the secret to Pym’s particles (which allows a person to shrink to ant size), and is working in league with HYDRA. Which means trouble for the world! It doesn’t take long before the film turns into a caper.
“Ant-Man” takes a light hearted approach to Marvel’s character and likely in part to writers Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish. From the opening credits, you can see, hear and feel a different vibe for this limb of the MCU. Rudd and Douglas bring heart to the film, and Rudd sells the every man role of Lang. Michael Pena also adds comic relief to the film with plenty of memorable moment.
The bottom line is that “Ant-Man” is a solid first time out for the character’s origin story in the MCU. The film’s casting is stellar, and the reason why it won’t tank in the box office. It’s an entertaining time at the movies, but you could wait until it comes out on DVD or streams.
Rating: B-