Deepwater Horizon

DEEPWATER HORIZON (Peter Berg, 2016)

The somber drama and action in DEEPWATER HORIZON recreate the events surrounding the worst oil spill in United States history, but despite the good intentions of honoring those who were endangered, injured, and killed, it’s kind of the cinematic equivalent of a commemorative plate. The imagery calls for hushed voices and bowed heads in solemn remembrance while also stoking righteous anger about why the accident occurred. The action impresses as a technical exercise, yet being thrust into the catastrophe with the men and women aboard the doomed rig remains a curiously distant viewing experience.

Deepwater Horizon sat about forty miles off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico with the task of preparing wells for others to come in and extract the oil. The crew is already more than a month behind schedule in April 2010 when the crew chief Jimmy Harrell (Kurt Russell) and chief electronics technician Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg) return. BP employees are pushing to speed up the process, even if it involves cutting some corners on safety. After a test result that raises some questions as to what it means, oil company man Vidrine (John Malkovich) insists that work proceed as though everything is shipshape.

Problems aren’t manifested immediately, but when they arrive, they have devastating consequences. The blowout and subsequent explosions engulf the rig in flames. The fire could seemingly burn forever because of all that oil gushing onto the ship from deep below the ocean. The distance from ship to shore means that rescuers cannot get to them right away, meaning that those who survived the initial blasts, especially those who did not get to a lifeboat, remain in danger from the fire and flying debris.

Director Peter Berg’s spatial awareness of the offshore platform provides capable guidance around the disaster site and conveys the sheer size of what is above and below the water. The hellish environment blooms when the bright interiors are smeared in orange and smothered in black. Berg batters the audience with the chaos and terror that would be felt when trapped in such a situation. Screenwriters Matthew Michael Carnahan and Matthew Hand do a solid job of laying out the process that contributed to what happened. While the trauma in the moment and the reasons for it are undeniable, DEEPWATER HORIZON fails to connect on a human level.

Establishing scenes of Deepwater Horizon workers with their families and the tearful news and reunions in the aftermath are meant to provide the emotional connections in an otherwise impersonal film. These scenes simply aren’t sufficient in building vested concerns in them beyond the standard response of not wanting people to be horribly killed. DEEPWATER HORIZON doesn’t spare BP for its contributing role to the disaster, but the cartoonishly villainous Malkovich performance jerks the film out of the realistic depiction Berg sets out to achieve.

Grade: C

Penguins of Madagascar

PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR (Eric Darnell and Simon J. Smith, 2014)

Referring to an animated film rather than a cartoon doesn’t connote the reach for creative validation implicit in the usage of graphic novel versus comic book, yet in both cases reduced mentions of the more juvenile-seeming term have brought more realism often at the expense of the frivolous. Today’s computer-animated offerings certainly still employ lighthearted comedy, but now silly jokes rarely seem to be enough on their own to sustain cinematic entertainment for kids. Something of substance must be conveyed as well, as though there’s a proficiency test all children’s films must prepare small viewers for. Animated characters are guided to put down their anvils for releasing on antagonists’ heads in favor of dropping life lessons. Taking animation more seriously has resulted in quality work receiving recognition that might not have come when it was written off as merely kids’ stuff, but it shouldn’t necessitate squeezing out less nourishing fare. Thankfully, PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR, which sets a course for non-stop zaniness, is a step toward restoring balance. The side characters’ spin-off film isn’t adage-free, but its message is a pill ground up and baked into a piece of cake.

PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR fills in how the four fowls became a unit separated from their colony and then picks up their story after the events of MADAGASCAR 3: EUROPE’S MOST WANTED. The appropriately named leader Skipper (Tom McGrath), brains of the group Kowalski (Chris Miller), demolitions expert Rico (Conrad Vernon), and secretary/mascot Private (Christopher Knights) plan to rob Fort Knox, although their sights are set on plundering a vending machine’s stash of discontinued Cheezy Dibbles than raiding the vault. Waiting for them is Dave (John Malkovich), an octopus known in disguise to the general public as Dr. Octavius Brine. Dave captures the penguins and takes them to his lair in Venice.

Dave too was once a featured resident of the Central Park Zoo, but he was shipped out when the penguins arrived and seized the attention of those who used to come to see him perform. Sent from park to park as other penguins continued to steal his thunder, Dave seeks revenge on their kind. He plans to use a serum on all penguins that will make the cute birds significantly less cuddly. This foursome gets rescued by The North Wind, a group of polar animals that help those who can’t help themselves. The North Wind believes the penguins will muck up their efforts to bring Dave to justice and sends them away, but the penguins have other things in mind.

PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR distinguishes itself with a combination of clever setpieces, wordplay, and some inspired celebrity voice casting. A chase through Venice and a sequence of midair plane-hopping deliver fleet and funny action that animation excels at. The penguins are humorous in their lack of self-awareness and inflated but not undeserved pride in tactical maneuvers. The dialogue stands out by verbing the names of actors and actresses into puns. Werner Herzog’s opening narration is an inspired joke, especially given his views on nature’s mercilessness. Malkovich’s delicious interpretation of an evil genius octopus serves as a terrific example of how trading on a well-known actor’s persona can be creatively wise and more than just a way of attaching familiar name to promote the film.

Like the other MADAGASCAR films, PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR isn’t something that sticks as being important or necessarily memorable in the long run, but it’s an enjoyable time that’s as worthwhile in moderation as the empty calories the penguins crave.

Grade: B

Warm Bodies

WARM BODIES (Jonathan Levine, 2013)

What’s a hunky, sensitive, undead guy like R (Nicholas Hoult) supposed to do after the apocalypse?  It’s been eight years since a plague left many, including him, as shuffling, brain-hungry vessels called corpses.  When he’s not chowing down on some gray matter, R trudges around the airport, shares knowing grunts with his best friend M (Rob Corddry), and kicks back on the plane he’s made home by getting misty listening to records.  (He’s a vinyl aficionado because it delivers better audio reproduction, natch.)

Like his fellow corpses in WARM BODIES, R is unable to recall his pre-zombie life.  He can make an educated guess about who he was based on his clothes and thinks he knows the first letter of his first name but that’s it.  While zombies have no memories of their own, eating brains isn’t just part of a healthy diet.  It also allows them to absorb their victims’ memories.

While hunting for food R and company encounter human survivors who’ve ventured beyond their walled city to scavenge for pharmaceuticals.  R feasts on the brain of Perry (Dave Franco) and the poor guy’s affectionate thoughts for his girlfriend Julie (Teresa Palmer).  This has a strange effect on R.  He develops feelings for the pretty blonde and chooses to whisk her out of the situation’s immediate danger and into safe hiding on his jet.

At first Julie is understandably anxious about the arrangement, but gradually R’s gentlemanly manner puts her at ease.  She can tell that under his cold, dead skin is a warm and generous heart, metaphorically speaking at least.  He is unwavering in protecting her from the corpses and the boneys, the name given to the faster, animalistic undead who have peeled off their skin.  Julie becomes fond of R, but how can she explain this star-crossed romance to her friends or her dad (John Malkovich), who’s leading the uninfected’s fight against their undead predators?

This zombified version of ROMEO AND JULIET ups the stakes in placing the couple between rungs on the food chain rather than feuding families, but it trivializes the love story because R’s devotion is not genuine.  He might as well have sipped a magic potion in secret, except in this case he’s gobbled some choice cerebrum.  R is having a vicarious experience performing the role of adoring boyfriend to an unknowing Julie, opening up WARM BODIES to the potential satire of idealization in relationships or projected familiarity in the communication age.  Instead writer-director Jonathan Levine reduces the allegorical components to their simplest terms and recycles the love-conquers-all motif in a scenario that doesn’t earn the payoff.

Although based on a novel, WARM BODIES feels like the product of a studio executive who thinks Shakespeare’s play is great except it could use a happy ending.  Oh, and zombies are popular at the moment, so might as well add them too.  The reappropriated plot works out an acceptable revised resolution, even if it’s betraying its primary influence.  The genre trappings are en vogue, perhaps cynically so, but using the undead as a prism for viewing tragic romance could have been a valid creative choice if the protagonists’ connection wasn’t forged how it is, especially because brain consumption in zombie lore doesn’t imply or require memory transference.

The lovers’ names, main struggle, and the balcony scene make the overlays with ROMEO AND JULIET unmistakable, but R and Julie get along like Tarzan and Jane as well.  He saves her from the threats in his untamed environment.  She humanizes the savage in place of serving as a civilizing influence on him.  Whether the Edgar Rice Burroughs parallels are intended or not, combining Shakespeare and zombies creates the expectation that the text will be treated with some irreverence, but to a baffling degree WARM BODIES is played mostly straight.  To Hoult and Palmer’s credit, they don’t look ridiculous articulating the earnest romance between the living and undead.  If only the film around them reflected the humor in it.  

Grade: C