Kong: Skull Island

KONG: SKULL ISLAND (Jordan Vogt-Roberts, 2017)

When satellite imagery reveals the location to the unexplored Skull Island in the South Pacific, the race is on to get there first. In KONG: SKULL ISLAND, Bill Randa (John Goodman), a U.S. government official with the organization Monarch, quickly assembles a team of soldiers, scientists, and adventure seekers to claim whatever mysteries the place may reveal. Taking the lead is tracker James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston). With the Vietnam War just concluded, Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson) and his men provide the squadron to protect and transport everyone to Skull Island through the nasty weather that encircles it.

None of them are prepared for encountering its enormous creatures, including the ape known as Kong and his reptilian-like predators. Those who survive the casualty-riddled arrival on Skull Island are separated, with Conrad’s group, which includes photojournalist Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), crossing paths with American pilot Hank Marlow (John C. Reilly). Marlow wrecked there during World War II and has lived among the natives in the intervening years. He considers getting off the island to be a foolish venture but has a makeshift boat in need of repairs that might help if they want to take the risk.

KONG: SKULL ISLAND believes bigger is better, from its unbelievably huge monsters to a primary cast big enough to field two softball teams. The number of main players can be a problem because there are so many characters to serve, even if just in a minor way to give each a distinguishing moment. For all of the mayhem, there’s not a heightened sense of danger because there are plenty of targets. Losing one or five doesn’t have an appreciable effect. They’re all types, even the presumed leads, rather than well-rounded protagonists. Reilly manages to stick out because of his funny and distinctive oddball nature.

To a large degree the lack of character-driven material doesn’t matter all that much as long as there’s enough spectacle. KONG: SKULL ISLAND delivers in that area. Whether Kong is swatting helicopters like flies, wrestling with a giant octopus, or battling his nemeses, the intimidatingly-dubbed skullcrawlers, the special effects impress as state of the art illusions and in their scale. While this and the 1933 KING KONG are not equals as films, the descendant understands the thrill of showmanship in its roots.

KONG: SKULL ISLAND spins a K-tel collection of Vietnam War film rock hits and is casual with its references to APOCALYPSE NOW, but there’s no grand vision of commentary about foreign conflicts or colonialism. That is all window dressing on a monster movie with an entertainer’s eagerness to please. If you want to see cinema’s great ape smash stuff up with the latest technology has to offer, KONG: SKULL ISLAND certainly delivers the goods.

Grade: B

I Am Not Your Negro

I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO (Raoul Peck, 2016)

Using the words of the writer James Baldwin, Raoul Peck’s Oscar-nominated documentary I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO looks back on race relations before and during the civil rights era in the United States and draws connections to the way things are today. The film is structured around Baldwin’s abandoned book about the lives and deaths of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr., all of whom the author knew.

Baldwin’s eloquent and pointed commentary comes directly from him via archival footage of talk shows and speeches. Baldwin was a teenage preacher, and his performative talents are evident as his presence leaps off the screen when sharing his considered opinions. Here is someone who had been living abroad for a number of years but chose to return and become engaged with the struggle back home. There’s a snap to his point of view because of the passion and intelligence supporting what he has to say.

Baldwin’s words are also delivered through Samuel L. Jackson’s weary voiceover, a stark counterpoint to the “on” personality that comes across in Baldwin’s public appearances. That vocal quality suggests what Baldwin, who died in 1987, might sound like all of these years later when many of the fights he waged are still ongoing, even if the shape of the conflicts have changed. Fifty or sixty years have passed since these divisive issues came to a boil in American civilization. Old images of the outright hostility can be shocking for those of us who have only ever encountered it as history. While progress has been made, Peck’s film underlines the fact that the dream of the 1960s continues to remain elusive in some ways. Jackson’s narration conveys the aggravation and tiredness of the long wait for societal ills to be cured.

I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO is not a film that seeks to reassure, nor should it be. It’s a challenge to those in the majority who consider themselves to be good people yet whose actions, whether actively or passively, don’t back up such a self-conception. The defiance in the title slaps back at the nation’s original sin. It’s up to the recipient to determine if that smack should be taken as an affront or a wake-up call.

Grade: B

The Hateful Eight

THE HATEFUL EIGHT (Quentin Tarantino, 2015)

A snowstorm is blanketing the Wyoming landscape in white in THE HATEFUL EIGHT when Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) stops a stagecoach in the hope that he might catch a ride to Red Rock and get out of the elements. After the Civil War, Marquis became a bounty hunter. He has three bodies stacked and ready to be cashed in if he can find transportation. To get on the stagecoach he must persuade John Ruth (Kurt Russell) that he means him no harm. John is known as The Hangman because he doesn’t kill his bounties but rather waits to see them strung up by their necks, and he’s not too eager for company due to the fact that he is cuffed to Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), whose bounty will fetch the high price of ten thousand dollars.

As it so happens, Marquis and John are acquainted, thus granting him a seat. On their way they also reluctantly pick up Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), whose claim to be the next sheriff of Red Rock is greeted dubiously considering his involvement with a notorious southern militia during the war. With the bad weather increasing, they stop at Minnie’s Haberdashery, where they find Bob (Demián Bichir), who is watching the place in Minnie’s absence; Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), the hangman en route to Red Rock; Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), a cowboy headed home; and General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern), an old Confederate in search of his missing son. Distrust and dislike runs high among this bunch of scoundrels, but whether they like it or not, the heavy snow requires they share the shelter.

Writer-director Quentin Tarantino confines this nefarious octet and waits patiently for them to kill each other. THE HATEFUL EIGHT filters Agatha Christie’s mysteries through Tarantino’s distinct sensibilities regarding violence, dark humor, cinema history, and savoring of language. In effect it is a chamber drama, just one that is bloodier, more vulgar, and angrier. It’s also as though he’s stretched the farm interrogation scene from INGLORIOUS BASTERDS into a three-hour plus film of its own. While the majority of THE HATEFUL EIGHT is bound to a single location, Tarantino finds numerous ways to explore the space and present those occupying it while keeping plenty of room for the unexpected. Much has been made of Tarantino shooting the film on 70mm and in a 2.76:1 aspect ratio, which some have shrugged off as overkill, but the wider frame and increased picture clarity are crucial to the actors’ blocking and detail awareness.

Tarantino’s preoccupation with screen violence is complicated and, depending on one’s perspective, problematic. As in his other films, he treats the bloodshed as something pleasurable to view and abhorrent, often concurrently. Perhaps more than anything else he’s made, THE HATEFUL EIGHT is concerned with that contradiction between our best and worst impulses, except here it’s under the guise of considering the difference between justice and frontier justice. If the title doesn’t make it clear that the characters are not good people, their actions should, yet it’s hard to resist the enjoyment in watching these silver-tongued devils behave horribly. Call such an attraction to depravity original sin if you like. As depicted in this film it’s very entertaining.

Extracting a clear thesis from THE HATEFUL EIGHT is a fool’s errand, although Tarantino seems to have followed DJANGO UNCHAINED with another exploration of this country’s racial history reflected in the present. Marquis’ Lincoln letter is a fantastic device for showing how he can pass in a society that is largely unaccepting of him because of his skin color. His anguished cry of “wake up white boy” near the film’s end echoes across the generations. With Tarantino’s work the subtext tends to be secondary to more immediate satisfactions and more muddled too. Still, it’s hard to ignore the seething rage in THE HATEFUL EIGHT behind the humor and impeccably lit images.

Grade: A-

Big Game

BIG GAME (Jalmari Helander, 2014)

Although exceptions exist, there should probably be a rule that the more self-consciously outrageous a film description sounds, the more likely that the synopsis is all it has going for it. That’s certainly true of BIG GAME, in which a Finnish boy on a solo rite of passage hunt protects Samuel L. Jackson as the President of the United States from would-be assassins. Writer-director Jalmari Helander isn’t striving to make an ironically bad film that winks nonstop at an audience presumably in on the joke. Instead this action comedy appears inspired by fantastical 1980s movies in which kids become involved with something much larger than themselves and grow through their adventures.

On the verge of his thirteenth birthday Oskari (Onni Tommila) is sent alone into a Finnish forest for one day and one night to track and kill his prey with a primitive bow and arrow. His father passed this initiation into manhood, and the same is expected of him, although he isn’t strong enough to pull the string back fully on his weapon. Deep in the wilderness he comes across an escape pod containing unpopular U.S. President William Alan Moore (Jackson). Disgruntled Secret Service agent Morris (Ray Stevenson) disabled Air Force One’s security system to permit his associates to blow the plane and its escorts out of the sky. Killing the President is on their agenda, but Hazar (Mehmet Kurtulus) wants to make a big show of capturing the leader of the free world before having him stuffed and mounted like a trophy.

After determining that the President is not an alien, Oskari brings William along on his expedition. They’re too far from anywhere for the President to get to safety on his own, and Oskari isn’t going to bail on his mission. Unbeknownst to them Morris, Hazar, and his men are in the forest looking for them with the intent of finishing what they’ve started.

As silly as the impression BIG GAME’s recap gives, the film resists following through with the campy concept. Jackson’s performance is restrained, which results in a tender moment with Oskari as he explains the difference between looking and being tough, but is a film this patently absurd when he should be holding back? And what are Victor Garber, Felicity Huffman, and Jim Broadbent doing in this? It’s as though they signed up to appear in a goof, but Helander forgot to make it funny out of concern for not being taken seriously as a filmmaker.

BIG GAME’s earnestness also confuses because of how cheap it looks. The cut-rate special effects are more in keeping with direct-to-video blockbuster knock-offs, which reinforces the absence of expected humor. The good and bad guys spend a lot of time walking and talking in the woods, so action scenes are few and unremarkable. Helander’s send-up of big-budget conspiracy thrillers and boys’ quests fails to register as anything but a wacky idea. It’s too mundane to entertain as a willfully bad effort with some name talent.

Grade: D+

Pulp Fiction

PULP FICTION (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)

PULP FICTION’s violence, non-linear structure, retro soundtrack, pop culture references, and overall hip factor are what have lingered in the collective memory, but revisiting Quentin Tarantino’s film twenty years after its debut is to rediscover a work whose maker is deliriously in love with the cinema and words. Although peppered with allusions to plenty of films and television shows, such verbal and visual citations are seasoning for the main course.

PULP FICTION is built upon monologues and conversations whose profane musicality engages the characters in lingual dances. Discussions revolve around mundane but humorous things as the differences between fast food item names in the United States and Europe, the intimacy of a foot massage, and the cowardice involved in keying a car, but the actors savor the rich language as though performing Shakespeare.

Told out of sequence, the interconnected stories focus on the criminal underworld in Los Angeles. Gangsters Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) procure a suitcase for their boss Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) but face obstacles delivering it. Boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) wins a fight he promised to throw but risks skipping town safely by returning home to get a cherished keepsake. At his boss’s request Vincent takes Marsellus’s wife Mia (Uma Thurman) out on the town knowing that a previous acquaintance who got close to her paid a serious price.

Tarantino’s reputation for presenting graphic violence, especially early in his career, exceeded what actually is seen on screen. Perhaps more than anything else, his ability to get a rise out of audiences with what they think they saw, paired with the skill of editor Sally Menke, may be the greatest demonstration of his talent. The notorious scene with the adrenaline shot to the heart never shows the needle being jammed through Mia’s breast plate. The discussion leading up to the act; seven tightening close-ups, including one of the dripping needle; a wide shot of Vincent bringing his arm down; and a thump as Mia jerks awake in close-up give a vivid impression without depicting the forceful injection.

Tarantino’s adeptness with humorous dialogue and mise en scene shouldn’t overshadow his handling of actors. This was Travolta’s comeback role, and he gives a performance that finds him charming and funny, not to mention the delightful moment when PULP FICTION pauses to recall his cinematic past by having him do the twist with Thurman. Jules is probably Jackson’s defining role. He’s playing more than just an intimidating enforcer. Jackson is fearsome when he’s marking his territory and bellowing Jules’ corruption of a verse from Ezekiel. He’s amusing shooting the breeze with a friend and co-worker who he likely thinks he’s a bit smarter than. As the film’s femme fatale Thurman displays her strength with how she lures Vincent into her domain and flirts aggressively without being too obvious for anyone who might be observing them.

PULP FICTION wielded massive influence and imitators, yet watching it again for the first time in years it still seems fresh. Those who tried to duplicate it took all of the wrong lessons.

Grade: A

Django Unchained

DJANGO UNCHAINED (Quentin Tarantino, 2012)

Quentin Tarantino loves mixing low and high art in his films, but until DJANGO UNCHAINED he never combined disparate ingredients to make a cocktail of the Molotov variety.  Through exploitation film violence and articulate dialogue--fancypants talk, as the film’s villains might say--the writer-director creates a lurid, funny, and smart entertainment that sneaks in potent commentary on racism in America and the movies. DJANGO UNCHAINED can be enjoyed purely for its numerous surface pleasures--Robert Richardson’s widescreen cinematography, the screenplay structure mirroring Germanic legend, and the clever, unconventional soundtrack cues--but careful study reveals it also to be a work expressing historical and contemporary fury.  

The film opens in 1858, roughly two years before the start of the Civil War, with German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) enlisting the help of slave Django (Jamie Foxx) in his pursuit of three brothers with nice prices on their heads.  Django is glad to cooperate, as the wanted men heaped abuse on him and Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), the wife he’s recently been separated from.  Schultz promises to pay Django and give him his freedom once they’ve found and killed the Brittle brothers, but rather than parting ways, they become partners in acquiring Broomhilda’s independence.

They learn that she was sold to Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), the Francophile owner of a notorious Mississippi plantation.  To make Candie’s acquaintance Schultz pretends to be interested in getting into the mandingo fight game, in which slaves spar to the death.  Django will pose as Schultz’s expert, a black slaver.  While their ruse might fool Candie, his head house slave Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson) is more suspicious of their motives.

Playing a role is one of the recurring themes in DJANGO UNCHAINED, and it’s a sly way for Tarantino to discuss how African-Americans are often required to adapt to pass in what gets defined as mainstream culture.  Django must swallow his pride and put forth a different appearance to achieve what he desires.  In that manner he’s no different than Stephen, an Uncle Tom whose demeanor shifts enormously when addressing blacks or whites and within a group or in private.  (Even Schultz, who does not bear the burden of being a racial outsider but is a foreigner, must adopt an exaggerated appearance of propriety and intellect to be perceived as less threatening.)  Not breaking character is literally a matter of life and death.     

Tarantino also dissects politeness as a defensive weapon, with the artful in-joke that Waltz’s Dr. King is expertly practiced in it, and the dropping of formal civility as an offensive action.  After all, DJANGO UNCHAINED turns on the refusal to shake hands. Passive resistance and dampened emotions can’t help but be unleashed in a more explosive form after so long of a struggle to keep them in check.  It’s a neat trick that Tarantino evokes the volatility of the 1960s civil rights campaign and the Civil War battlefield with a bloody shootout inside a plantation house.     

Tarantino’s films have a complicated relationship with violence.  He enjoys bloody revenge fulfilled on screen yet can be repulsed by having the basest of impulses satisfied.  DJANGO UNCHAINED is no different.  Tarantino’s expert use of sound and suggestion convey the horrific treatment of slaves without lingering over it.  (His reputation for depicting violent acts is greater than what’s actually visible.)  The violence exacted upon the villains, almost all white, is more explicit visually, but in featuring blood geysers taken from the trashy movies that inspire him, it’s cartoonish too.  Somehow he finds a way to be responsible with on-screen violence and wallow in its disreputable appeal.

Django must hold his passion in reserve for much of the film, which makes it all the easier to overlook Foxx’s subdued performance.  The character mustn’t betray his feelings, so the power of Foxx’s work is found in his eyes and posture and how he withholds the anger burning inside him.  If ever an actor was born to deliver Tarantino’s words, it’s Waltz.  He savors the ornate sentences and brings lightness to the heavy narrative lifting he’s called upon to execute.  Waltz also displays crack comic timing that he shows off when he walks Django through his method of doing business.  DiCaprio relishes playing the self-regarding creep and does a dazzling flip from southern-fried hospitality to menace.  Jackson gets the difficult task of acting the part of a classic Hollywood stereotype, but he fleshes out his despicable character as Django’s opposite. A white man gave Stephen the opportunity to have some latitude too and he took it. Tarantino supports the fantastic performances by letting major conversation-driven scenes play out in wide shots and thus allows observing the dynamics between multiple characters at once.

DJANGO UNCHAINED presents Tarantino as a film critic and cultural analyst.  He’s a highly gifted filmmaker whose work is more thoughtful and nuanced than the statements he sometimes offers while playing the manic provocateur part in publicity appearances. This bloody, hilarious, shocking, and righteously angry film is the kind of great art and great trash he aspires to make.

Grade: A